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Yahoo! Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Checklist

You should take the time to check that your existing pages are up to scratch as far as search engine optimization is concerned. Search engine optimization checklist:

  1. Is your product name and related main search terms included in the title tag?
    <title>Keyword rich title.</title>
  2. Do you have different meta descriptions for EVERY page?
    <meta name="description" content="Your unique description.">
  3. Do you have different meta keywords for EVERY page?
    <meta name="keywords" content="keyword1,keyword2,etc.">
  4. Do you have your main search terms in visible text on your pages at least 3 times?
  5. Are your pages created for specific content and subject rather than generalized and squeezed into a few pages?
  6. Are you linking from your other internal pages to your product pages with keyword rich link text?
    <a href="http://www.yourdomain/product-page.htm">Product or Keyword</a>
  7. Are you using the alt attribute on images to help emphasize your main search terms?
    <alt="keywords or phrase">
  8. Have you recently tried to gain links from other websites? If not, why not? Do so now!
  9. Can you exchange existing graphic text(image) for normal text anywhere on your pages?
  10. Can you add text to those pages that currently have very little?
  11. Do you have a site map to assist search engine spiders in finding your pages? And/or are you linking to every page from your home page?
  12. Have you checked that those linking to you, are doing so with the optimum link text (anchor text)? And are they really linking to you? Have you checked lately?
If you do not understand or can not do these things yourself, find somebody who can. Otherwise, your website will never reach it's full potential. All websites can work!

There is no better time than now to get the HTML editor out than now. Tweaking your site for search traffic can increase your online revenue more than you might imagine! If you would like to know more about search engine optimization, keep reading!

Google! Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tutorial

Search engine optimization has changed dramatically over the last 2-3 years.

A few years ago, it was for the most part sufficient to incorporate a well optimized title tag and have a few relevant search terms (keywords) in the meta tags to get a top 10 ranking. Those days are long gone, and yet in my estimation, over 75% of webmasters still hold on to the notion that search engine optimization is all about tweaking title and meta tags. It is essential today to understand that meta tags for example, carry zero to little weight in a search engine algorithm. In fact, the keyword meta tag for example, is completely ignored by the Google search engine, while other search engines give it very little weight.

The main reason for the big changes has been the abuse of the meta tags on mass and the search engine results pages (SERPs) were becoming just a list of spam ridden sites with keyword stuffed meta tags, often not even relevant to the site in question. There are now, for Google, approximately 100 different HTML, design, on and off-page elements that can make the difference between a top 10 and top 100 ranking.

Of far more importance nowadays for example, is the actual body text content within a page and what I like to call off-page criteria which includes number of inbound links, anchor text of inbound links and whether the links come from "authority" / "high value" sites (in Google's case).

The design, structure and website technology used are also important ranking criteria for the major search engines. Where in a websites source code, and in which HTML tags keywords appear, is just as important as the number of occurrences and the ratio of these keywords in relation to the rest of a pages text content (known as keyword density).

Search engines use so called robots or spiders which go through a web pages source code and store the crawled page in a database. This robot will usually follow the links on a page (assuming it can read and interpret them, but more on that later) and then crawl the linked page, and store this page also in it's database, follow on to the next link and so on.

The favorite diet of these search engine robots/spiders is text. I usually call it spider food. Text embedded in images is unreadable to spiders, so are the text content in Java applets, JavaScript, css and in many search engines the links/text in image maps and flash objects are ignored. The links in framesets can also cause problems for some search engines. Most search engines do not like frames.

The following pages are my attempt to dispel the common myths about achieving high rankings on the search engines and is designed to provide the basics on how to achieve a good ranking. Experienced search engine optimizers will not learn much from these pages. The place for SEO experienced webmasters would be directly from the search engine in question to learn their views and commentary on modern SEO methodology -- since no two search engines rank their listings exactly alike.

To get the most of this tutorial, a little HTML and CSS knowledge is of benefit.

There is NO simple formula for getting ranked No.1 on Google for example. Let me make that clear, there is optimization methodology that makes it far more likely for someone to get ranked far higher than they would be without any optimization.

Preparation And First Steps

Search engine optimization should ideally be one of the areas taken into account at the initial planning stage of a website. Thoughts on making a website search engine friendly should be made before even the first line of code is written. Careful consideration should be given to your design, site structure, navigation and internal linking structure. Do you REALLY have to use frames for example (not good)?. Is it really necessary to use active server pages (.asp) on every page of your website (not good)? Do you really need flash (not good)? Do you really need more images than text (not good)? Do you really need those image links (not good)? Do you really need all of that embedded script language or applets (not good)? All of these methods and more (not search engine friendly) will affect how your pages are ranked with search engines. Search engine friendliness should not be the only topic up for review in the planning of your website, but it is so commonly missed out completely in a websites planning phase. The major corporate websites are the most guilty of all for poor planning (usually very poor planning).

The magic question is... Do you simply want to entertain people with shocking graphics and tricks? Or, do you want to generate leads and sales? Either choice, people have to find your website first!

Let's take the case that you are going to go for a search engine friendly website. No frames, no or limited use of flash, java applets or extensive JavaScript etc. The next step is to establish your best search terms (keywords) or better phrases. This is a very important phase of search engine optimization. Just go for what you THINK are your best keywords and you may well regret it afterwards, when you find most searchers do not use the search term you thought was good. Research your keywords properly and you are halfway home. Do you know for example what users are typing into search engine boxes to find sites with similar or the same content your site provides? Do you know what two and three word combinations are most commonly being used and have relevance to your site? Do you know how many competing pages there are for each of your main keywords? Which keywords will bring you the best visit/sale conversions? What keywords your competitors targeting?

If you do not know ALL of the answers to the above, you are not alone. If you noticed that I spell the word web site(s) on this page with and without a space, it is not by error.

There are essentially 3 main methods you can use to establish the best keywords for a given web site.

  1. Send all your friends and colleagues an email or hand them a sheet of paper with the following question on it stating specifically that you need at least 5 answers:

    If you were searching for a web site with content identical to, or of the same theme as www.yourdomain.com, what word, or better word combinations (2-4 words) would you type into the search box? Please give 5 possible search terms or search term phrases that you believe are relevant to www.yourdomain.com content."

    1 _______________
    2 _______________
    3 _______________
    4 _______________
    5 _______________


    Important: Make sure you actually write a numbered list 1-5 leaving spaces for them to fill in! Otherwise in my experience you will find you generally get just the one or two possible keywords.

    You then collate the results from everyone and you can normally see clearly what enters most peoples heads for the keywords relating to your site. This method is particularly useful if you have plenty of people to ask. The more the better really. Ideal for companies with more than a handful of employees. You will commonly see keywords that you would never have thought of yourself and it gives you a great start on your keyword selection process. Studies have shown that 65% of the replies will be 2 words or more combinations. This is good news, I'll tell you why later.

  2. One of the best ways to get ideas for keywords, is to analyze your direct competitors pages. This doesn't mean you simply copy and paste your competitors keyword meta tags into your own site! Also be VERY careful not to use trademarked names.

    You can best find your competition websites by searching with what you believe to be your own top two keywords in your favorite search engine and taking a look at the source code of the top 5 web sites in the results. Pay special attention to the contents of the title tag <title>...</title> and of course the keyword <meta name="keywords"...> and description <meta name="description"...> meta tags. These should help you get some keyword ideas. There is nothing unethical about researching your competitors websites. You can be sure they have done the same for their own site.

    Successful companies know their competitors. Analyze your competitors websites in depth.

  3. There are online resources that assist in the process of keyword research and selection. Generally through the use of large keyword databases holding the number of searches for any given term over a specific time frame. Normally a month or two worth of keywords. These databases can be very useful as they not only provide the number of searches but also help with synonyms and common keyword combinations relating to your specific theme. There is a company called Rivergold Associates Ltd. who offers a service called wordtracker. There are also other free keyword databases that can be found on the Internet.
Keep in mind that you must determine and prioritize your keywords using only your most powerful and relevant keywords per page as your website cannot rank the best for all keywords all the time. Specific pages emphasizing the most powerful and relevant keywords per page should be your objective. If you find too many good keywords for a specific page, create a new page(s) and divide the content into two or more specific content pages.

There are some general guidelines to keyword selection that you should take note. For web sites with lots of competition, it can normally be far more beneficial to optimize for two to three word combinations rather than single word terms. Especially if a site is new and has little so called off-page criteria such as inbound links. You will find you can get far more targeted traffic if you hone in on what exactly your web page is about. A good example for this would be if you had a real estate agency in say Michigan. What you do not want to do is just focus your website solely on the keywords "real estate". You want to go for keywords which are honed in and very relevant to your site so in this case "real estate michigan" would be best. You could also take that a step further and optimize a sub page on your site for say "real estate detroit" or even "real estate detroit michigan". Now you are going to get targeted traffic and not a visitor from Nebraska looking for real estate locally. It is all about targeted traffic.

If there is little competition, say less than 80,000 competing sites on a Google search, you can then go for single term keywords regardless of your sites off page criteria (number of incoming links). Maybe that person in Nebraska wants to move out of state!

For highly competitive terms, it is definitely best to consult a professional as to what keywords are best as they should have access to the subscription based databases and experience.

Plan for a maximum of only 3 keyword (phrases) per page.

Any more and you end up diluting the effect of any optimization for each of your keywords.

Now we have researched and chosen our best keywords, it is time to start thinking carefully about how and where to incorporate them in to your web pages. Thoughts and planning on your sites design should now be brewing.

Design Issues

The design factors on a website can make the difference between a page being in the top 10 of a search engine and languishing in the top 30. Design issues are a very important factor in achieving the very top rankings. This section will be looking at the design implications on search engine optimization and pointing you in the right direction towards a search engine friendly design.

You really want to think about your website design BEFORE you even start coding. Here are the most important factors.

  1. Text, text and more text! A web page with a large "splash" graphic and a few links embedded in an image map, commonly seen on corporate sites, is a great way how not to be found on a search engine.

    First of all, there is nothing on the page for a search engine to index and run through its algorithm when someone types in a relevant search term. Secondly because the links are in an image map, it is not often a search engine will be able to follow the links and index anything else. Do not forget search engines can not read the text in a graphic. On most occasions there is no need to use graphic buttons or image maps for links. With CSS and table cell know-how, you can make professional looking links. This provides great search engine spider food. Think carefully whether you really need a flashy splash page as your home page. Be careful not to use a design that requires extensive graphics or flash and go for professional text based pages that still look good instead. We are NOT advocating text only sites, just don't go over the top on the graphics front. Fewer graphics also give your site much quicker loading times as well don't forget.

  2. Use <H1> and <H2> heading tags. The text content in these tags carry special weight with many search engines and are best used as closely after your body tag as possible. A very common mistake is to use a graphic as a heading when a well formulated text heading would do the job just as well without major detriment to the sites look and feel. You can always change the size or look of your heading tags through the use of CSS. Don't forget search engines won't be able to read the words in your pretty graphic headings and it is such a waste of a good opportunity to add keyword rich content. The use of heading tags can play an important role in your overall web page optimization.

  3. In addition to the heading tag, the bold <b> or strong <strong> tag also carry more weight for ranking purposes than normal paragraph text. Some engines like to see cursive text as well.

    Do not over do the bold and cursive usage. Some sites I've seen have gone completely over the top on font styling for SEO. This makes a page look odd with every keyword either bold or cursive. You really only need to do it once or twice for each keyword. Even then, the weighting boost is minimal and many top ranked sites have no keywords in bold/ italic whatsoever, so don't feel obliged to use such styling.

  4. Search engines love links that contain keywords in the link text (anchor text). By link text I mean the text found inside a tag. Whether internal links or outbound links, be sure to use every opportunity to add your keywords into your links. It stands to reason therefore that generally text links are better than graphic links for SEO purposes.
Up until now we have covered what search engine robots like as spider food and want to see. Let us now concentrate on the opposite, what constitutes search engine unfriendly pages and in particular search engine unfriendly design.

Frames

One of the most common hindrances to a website not getting found with relevant terms is due to the fact it is a frames website that has not been correctly optimized.

What are framed sites? Framed sites divide a web page into multiple independently scrollable regions. A framed site consists of a frameset page which normally contains no text. The code could well produce a page with excellent content and the human viewer can usually see the keyword rich content you have created for your framed pages. But what you don't see, is precisely what the search engine robots take back to their database to be used on their algorithms -- nothing but junk code!

Frightening isn't it, the only text on this page that is going to be indexed is the title plus "Your browser does not support Frames!" You do not have to be Einstein to work out that you are not going to rank highly on any worthwhile search term if that is all a spider is going to take back with it for indexation.

There are of course workarounds which do work and make drastic improvements on getting a framed website found on the search engines. Even with professional search engine optimization of a framed web site, a non-framed website which has minimal optimization is likely to beat it in the rankings. Other reasons why framed sites are general no-no's can be found here. We will be going through some of the optimization and workarounds specific to frame sites later in this tutorial in the coding section.

It is much, much, easier and normally makes for better rankings, if a website is not framed.

In truth, it is rare when I look at a framed website that I actually see a need for the frames. Clever use of CSS and tables will almost always render frames unnecessary in the first place. If you have a small website in frames, do yourself, your viewers, and your sites ranking a favor, by converting it to a non-framed site as soon as possible. It is definitely worth it. Most people do not like looking through a small window to see your product or service.

The problems with framed sites are too many to mention them all and I suggest not to use frames on a website or you will experience many unfriendly consequences of using frames.

Flash

Pure flash pages, or pages heavily loaded with flash suffer from the same ranking problems as frame sites. There is simply not enough "spider food", hence there is invariably no meaningful ranking achieved. Again the vast majority of search engines have problems following the links in flash objects. Google and possibly now AllTheWeb to my knowledge are the only search engines with the ability to follow flash embedded links.

Again, no prizes for guessing why flash only sites almost always receive a low ranking!

There are solutions to achieve a reasonably high ranking through the proper use of any one or a combination of the four techniques listed below. In no particular order...

Ironically enough you can place the flash page in a frameset and optimize the frameset page properly. This highlights just how search engine unfriendly pure flash sites really are.

Call the Flash with JavaScript and make good use of the <noscript> tag. The least effective optimization.

Create a doorway page. A doorway page is essentially an entry page optimized especially for a search engine. They rarely have much content, being only entry pages, and rarely achieve high link popularity, they are a reasonable solution for flash only sites. Be warned however that search engines generally do not like them and if you duplicate content or use tricky redirection be aware that you could be penalized. Of all the reasons quoted by proponents of doorway pages, having a flash only site is probably the most compelling. As a general rule, do your best to avoid the need of creating doorway pages.

These are the main, but not the only ways (other methods are quite technical and will not fit/suit this tutorial) of optimizing a flash page. But do you really, really need to have all of your page as flash?

Having said all the above, it is pretty rare that a complete web page really has to be one big flash object. You can, and many search engine savvy webmasters do, add text content and text links above or below a flash object. You should definitely add a text link to a non-flash option (you DO have a non-flash alternative don't you?) this will help ensure the rest of your site gets spidered. We are of the belief that flash should be used to enhance a web site but that it should not BE the web site. The odd flash object does not harm your web sites ranking as long as you have optimized html coding and text around it. One big flash object, as in the above source code, is dooming your web site to search engine result obscurity in many cases. Flash and so called 'splash' pages (mainly one or two images with next to no text content) have their place (I suppose), but use them wisely and sparingly if possible.

Java

Use java applets sparingly. They are unreadable to search engines and a site based on a couple of java applets with little text content will not rank well.

Extensive use of JavaScript can hinder the spidering of your web pages. Where possible place all your JavaScript in an external file and call it by using the following code.

<SCRIPT SRC="your_javascript_code.js"></SCRIPT>

Whereby the content of your_javascript_file.js is essentially a text file with the suffix .js (not .txt) that includes your JavaScript code that comes between script tag delimiters. This makes spidering of a page easier and generally brings your keyword rich content further up in the source code.

Structure

It is generally recommended to keep a flat structure when planning your website presence. That does not mean you must throw everything in the root directory for best results. You should also not go more than 2-3 levels deep in your directory structure.

Below is an example of a flat structure:

Root / Index Page
Directory (Theme1) Directory (Theme2) Directory (Theme3)
Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 1 Page 2 Page 3

The actual web address (URL) for page three on theme three would look like:

http://www.yourdomain.com/theme3/page3.htm

The example website is structured with a directory structure of not more than three levels deep. Note that the directories should be named after the main theme of the content to be placed into the directory. In other words, use your main keywords here. Try not to lump everything in the same directories. It is normally wiser to have separate but related themes in different directories e.g. a real estate website may have--

www.xyz-real-estate.com/rent/page.html
and
www.xyz-real-estate.com/purchase/page.html

This does not necessarily give you a ranking boost because you have a keyword in your url, the benefit actually has more to do with off-page criteria than on-page as if you are linked to with just a url, you will have your keywords in the link text (anchor text) automatically, which is becoming increasingly important.

Here we have an example of what not to do. A vertical or deep structure:

Root / Index Page
Directory (Theme1)
Page 1 Page 2 Page 3
Directory (Theme2)
Page 1 Page 2 Page 3
Directory (Theme3)
Page 1 Page 2 Page 3

The web address (url) to get to page three, theme three now looks like this...:

www.xyz.com/Theme1/Theme2/Theme3/page3.html

The difference here being we have nested the directories. Some sites I have seen go as deep as 4 or 5 levels and the url is so long it completely feels the address bar. The main disadvantage of deep or vertical directory structures is the fact that search engines spiders may well have difficulty finding and indexing the pages within the deeper directories. Some search engine spiders will only go 2-3 levels deep with their spidering. This is especially so when the deep pages are not well linked, such as from the home page, top level directories or site map.

Make the spidering of your website as easy as possible for search engine spiders. Use keywords for your directory names and website pages. Research and testing has shown that keywords in a url can and do have a ranking benefit albeit often indirectly. Nowadays this has more to do with incoming link text, but it does have an effect never the less.

An ideal url for an english real estate agency in Portsmouth that has a bungalow to rent might be:

www.portsmouth-real-estate.com/bungalows/rent.htm

In the url are 4 keywords. 'portsmouth' , 'real estate', 'bungalows', 'rent'

Some may well link to this page like...

http://www.portsmouth-real-estate.com/bungalows/rent.htm

The result.., keyword rich link text which a search engine will lap up!

Navigation, Internal And External Linking

It is important that all of your website pages are thoroughly linked together. How you link them together can also have an influence on ranking. In general it is better to use text links over graphic button/image links. The reason being that you can include a keyword in the link text (anchor text). It is no coincidence that my navigation to the left is all done with text links. Adding a keyword in the link text provides a ranking boost for the linked page amongst many search engines, especially Google. If you do use graphic images for your navigation be sure it is not done with an image map without some other navigation present. Many search engines can not follow the links in image maps. It is also a good idea to use the Alt attribute on images which is believed to add a ranking boost for some search engines. You should not just use the Alt attribute to stuff in keywords but make the text within match the image and destination if it is a link.

It is important to be aware that some designs make it difficult for a search engine spider to follow internal links and index your pages. If you truly must use image maps in your main navigation, be sure to give the spiders something else to find and follow just in case. In general, make it as easy as possible for a search engine to find your pages with thorough linkage and wherever possible use text links with a keyword in the link text. Your most important pages should be linked from all your internal pages. Try to keep the clicks to any web page as low as possible. If you have hundreds of pages which makes it impractical to list them all from your home page, build a site map page which does list all / your most important other pages and place the site map it in your root directory. This ensures you are never more than two clicks away from any page. Site maps are not used enough by webmasters and can really help your site getting indexed.

Be careful not to have too many external links on your pages. Google recommends no more than 100. If your site is just links (no descriptions) you may be flagged as a link farm and penalized/ignored by some search engines. There is also a more advanced issue which involves the draining of Google PageRank (tm). In my experience it is rare to find a site consisting of just links making it into the top 10. I personally would never put more than 6 outbound links on any one page unless it was a directory or 'other resources' page.

Over the past year or two, some search engines have included in their main algorithm, or have included as a separate algorithm (PageRank in Google's case), a means of checking the number of incoming links to a given web page (link popularity). The theory being, the more incoming links your site has then the more likely it is that your site has content of value and therefore the more inbound links the more a site must be of worth and if linked with the same theme keywords the more relevant it must be to those pages that have few links. This is VERY important nowadays. Obtaining links from similarly related websites should be a major goal.

In the case of the Google PageRank algorithm for example, it is not just the quantity of links that point to your website, but also the quality. Quality can be measured in essentially 3 ways.

  1. Is the website that is giving you a link of the same theme and keyword relevance as your own pages.
  2. How popular is the site which is giving you the link (how many links does that site have pointing to it, the linking sites own Google PageRank).
  3. How many other outbound links are on the page from where you have been linked from (dilution of PageRank inheritance).
For example, a popular website which has many quality links pointing to it has recently linked to your site from it's home page. This page has a total of 3 other outbound links. This is ideal for your site, especially if the link is a text link where the link text (anchor text) is a keyword relevant to your page.

On the other hand, a site which itself has few incoming links and has an "other resources" page in which a link to your site is one of over 20 others, then you can not expect much of a ranking boost, or in Google's case, much of a boost in PageRank. Having said that, it won't harm your site either. Webmasters in our experience are not making enough effort to obtain quality inbound links; either through exchanging; or just asking webmasters of similarly themed websites for a link. If you have a site with quality useful content, a webmaster will be more willing to link to you than if all you have is a 2 page front window and link list site. Again, the importance of quality content can help your ranking.

Links from major web directories such as
DMOZ (ODP) boost your general link popularity and are particularly valued with the Google search engine. You can submit your home page to DMOZ for a free listing. Most other search engines use the DMOZ listings to populate their listings since DMOZ listings are reviewed and accepted by humans for detailed accuracy. Getting listed with DMOZ is both very easy and very difficult depending on the person (volunteer) responsible to review your submission. Most of the volunteers are worthless, but a few of them are truly excellent in response time and productivity.

In summary, make sure you actively seek links from quality sites, starting off with the major web directories, but do not waste your time with link lists/farms or FFA'S (Free For Alls) which invariably just mean you will receive more spam in your post box than normal or in the case of link farms get your site penalized for belonging to what is known as a bad neighborhood. An idea by the way is to go to your favorite search engine and type in the following to help find potential sites to exchange/request a link or submit to.

keyword +add url
keyword +submit
keyword +websites
keyword +resources
keyword +directory
keyword +list

In short, obtain links from quality sites and wherever possible get the link text to contain at least one of your keywords. If your website offers something unique or contains excellent content, it will generate link popularity naturally. Websites with little useful content have to work much harder.

In Summary

We have researched our keywords and have crafted our meta tags. The <title> tag should consist of up to six or maximum seven words using up to three main keywords. We have our heading <H1>-<H2>) with our keywords within. Now we have the corner stone for a highly optimized web page, lets move on now to the main content of your page.

CSS And Javascript

CSS definitions are called from an external file named .css from the root directory of a Web server. The code can be saved with Notepad using the extension .css instead of .txt.

The javascript equivalent code to call an external Javascript file is noted below.

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript" SRC="Myscript.js">
...
</SCRIPT>

Keyword Placement

Wherever possible, be sure to get your main keyword rich content as high up in your source code as possible. This ensures a spider finds it early and is not hampered by reams of javascript and css coding. As already mentioned, it is not only how many times your keyword appears, but also where the keyword / keyword phrases appear.

Where you place your keywords can make a ranking difference. In general you want your main keyword phrases/words to be close to the top of your source code. This doesn't mean keywords should only be at the top of your page, in fact, it has been seen to help if you also have a strong concentration of keywords at the bottom of your source code as well and of course sprinkled throughout the rest of your page. Keyword prominence is believed to not only apply to total body text but also individual tags, such as the very important title tag. Try to get your main keyword as the first or second word in your title tag.

We have our heading and sub-heading which will look something like this on a Web page...

Portsmouth Bungalows for Rent
Portsmouth Bungalows

If the <H1> or <H2> tags look too big or bulky, you can redefine it using css.

Keyword density does not carry the amount of weight it used to carry. Even so you need to make sure that your keywords appear on your website with more than 1.5% of your total body text. For each 100 words try not to go over 15% in density.

As a rough guideline which covers the main search engines, the following should work well.

Get your keywords in early in your body text. Your first paragraph after your heading tag(s) should have your primary keyword / keyword phrase appear at least twice. Preferably as the first word of your paragraph. Do NOT make the mistake of many which is to repeat a keyword constantly, such as every other word. This will be flagged as spam by the search engines and you may suffer a ranking penalty.

Once the first paragraph is completed and rich with keywords (and readable!), move on to the rest of your body text. If you are using a graphic such as a picture of a bungalow, be sure to use the alt attribute on the images you use as mentioned in the design section of this tutorial but don't use the same word more than three times on different images. The main text should of course still contain keywords, but the middle section of your body text is not quite as important as the first paragraph or first 150-250 characters of body text.

Use italic and bold once or twice on your keywords as long as it doesn't make the site look strange. A good thing to do is to have text links with keywords as link text at the very bottom of your page with a closing paragraph using your keywords just above.

If you use images as links, try out the title attribute. The logo top left on this page uses the title attribute this time as opposed to the alt attribute. Which is better is an ongoing argument in SEO circles, so why not use title attributes on one page and alt attribute on another.

On more recent browsers you will see on mouse hover the text as you would with the alt attribute.

Most search engines look for complete source code keyword density, which would include the contents of your head tag and such things as the alt and title attribute. You can easily find out what your keyword density is online with the help of www.keyworddensity.com. We suggest you use "raw data comparison" for an excellent breakdown of keyword density. You can even add a secondary URL for comparison purposes.

Getting search engine optimization right is not without its pitfalls.

What seems to appear at the top of a web page to you and me as website visitors, is not always the same as what a search engine spider will view as top. Especially when tables are in use. This is highlighted by the fact that for example the links on the left of your page as far as a spider is concerned comes before this text. The reason for this is the way tables are created.

Remembering about keyword prominence, and the need to have your keyword rich content at the top of your source code, you will see that the first text content it comes across is in the left hand column "Side Bar". What this means is that you should place at the top of your left side bar keyword rich text. On some of my pages, you will notice that I have a paragraph or keywords before the navigation links. This was not by accident. There is an HTML trick for simple 2 column tables which will allow the "Main body of text goes here" column to come before the "Side Bar" in your source code.

NoFrame Tag

Now back to the subject of frame sites. Unknown to probably around 70% of webmasters, is that the content of the noframe tag is indexed by the vast majority of search engines. This means you can use the noframe tag, without the need to be too concerned about design, to optimize your frameset page. If you follow the same guidelines given throughout this tutorial and simply place your optimized body text in your noframe tag you will already have a significant improvement than the standard "Your site does not support frames" common optimization error. Do not forgot in your noframe tag to add links to your framed pages. Some search engines won't find them otherwise although nowadays more and more engines can follow frameset links/pages. There is the problem of a framed page being found on the search engines. And once clicked upon by a searcher the page is loaded without the frameset, which commonly means no navigation side bar or worse. Hence another good reason to add text links at the bottom of your pages and of course within your noframe tag. There is a Javascript solution for calling up the original frameset and inserting the page correctly within it.

Submitting To Search Engines

Before you take the final step and submit your Website to the search engines, you should first check two important things.

  1. Your website has no broken links (including images). A broken link on your Homepage may result in not all of your pages being spidered.
  2. Run your Website through an HTML validator either online or offline. This can be done online through the official W3C validation site here. You can also download a good HTML editor tool, which has a validation check built into it. A good example of which is HTML-Kit. Poor code can be another reason for a search engine spider to stop spidering/following your pages.
Once you have checked your site for broken links and have validated it, you can submit it to the search engines. There are 3 main ways to submit your website to the search engines.

  1. There are various software packages which can be downloaded for the use of submitting your site automatically to the engines. The advantage of using software is mainly that you save yourself a lot of time as you only enter your site details once and then normally click a button and the site will be submitted automatically to the major and minor search engines.

    There are several disadvantages to using software, especially regarding the more important engines. Most search engines do not like automatic submissions. Altavista for example recently incorporated a password into their submission process in order to stop automatic submissions. Another major disadvantage is more 'peace of mind' than anything else. You are relying on the software to submit the site correctly. After all of the optimization effort you put in, it is normally wise to be 100% sure that your site has been properly submitted. This is not always possible with software submission, sometimes they are slacking in their search engine updates, so submission can occur to a wrong address. For the smaller less important search engines, submission software is quite suitable.

  2. Online submission through third party websites and services. There are numerous online services in which you can enter your url for batch submission to the search engines. One advantage is that submission can in many cases be done free of charge. There are some services which will submit your Website for you for a fee. There is a need to be very cautious when using any online automatic submission service. First, you rarely get any proper reporting. You click the button and cross your fingers in most cases. Even those that do provide submission reports, you have to take their word for it with no confirmation from the search engines themselves. You should be particularly wary of those services that offer to submit your site to hundreds, or in some cases, to thousands of search engines. The reason here is that 90% of your search engine traffic comes from the top 5 search engines. The rest of the engines are either small engines where you will get extremely little Web traffic , or worse, FFA (free for all) lists, which are nothing more than email collecting scripts for the sole purpose of spamming you day in and day out. Of the 3 methods of submission, this one has to be the worst option.

  3. Manually submit your Website to the search engines. Submitting manually to the top 10-15 search engines has many advantages over the other two methods mentioned. This method can be time consuming, but very productive and worth your time and effort. Submission is an important step towards getting your site indexed, and in our opinion and experience, one where corners should not be cut. We always submit all our clients websites manually.
Search Engine Submission Tips

  1. Hundreds of other meaningful, less popular search engines will spider the major search engines and use their listings as their own. Therefore if you get listed with the major search engines, you will also get listed with other many other search engines as well. You should also know that submitting to search engines is not necessary. Almost every search engine will find your website without you doing anything -- this is what they do. Submitting may only expedite the process. Your job is to make sure that your website is search engine friendly to the best of your ability when they come looking for you. And, they revisit your website every few months to investigate your website for updates and new content.

  2. Read the search engine guidelines! There you will find out how many pages you may submit per 24 hour period, how often you can resubmit, whether the search engine will "deep crawl" and pick up all of your sites pages, and other search engine specific guidelines. This is very important as some engines will consider many page or too frequent submissions as spam. AltaVista for example limits you to just 5 pages per session. The last thing you want is to fall down at the submission phase.

  3. When/if asked for a description, be sure to use descriptive text using your keywords and not simply a comma separated list of your keywords. Be sure the text will draw people into clicking on the results link.

  4. A good combination to submit to a search engine is 3 pages. Your home page, your site map (if you don't have one, consider making one as it can help to make sure all your pages are visited and indexed) and one other major page when submitting to those engines that deep crawl your site (they follow all links and index every page they find).
Incoming Links

Now that you have submitted your site to the search engines, you can get on with other things. Quite important, and for some search engines a criteria to be met before becoming indexed, is for your home page to have some incoming links. Google for example likes to see at least 2-3 pages that link to your site before it will index your own -- this is why you want us to link to your home page from two or more pages. Your next step is to make sure you are in as many major directories as possible. Particularly the open directory project (DMOZ), Yahoo, About.com and Looksmart directories. You should then concentrate on as many secondary, regional and theme related directories as you can find in an effort to obtain as many incoming links as possible.

Then, it is time to get links from other webmasters with preferably similarly related Websites.

First, compile a list of competitors websites or similarly related websites using the various backlink query tools available to establish who is linking to your competitors and store them in a spread sheet. Add two additional columns, one for the email address and one for a contact full name (webmasters/marketing managers).

You will soon have a large list of webmasters to which you can ask for a link exchange or simply request a link. Very important here is to realize that if you don't ask, you don't get. What do you have to lose by asking?

If you own other sites be sure you add a link to your newly submitted site, preferably a text link using a keyword in the link text. Owning a second or third website is a big advantage to create several incoming links for each website.

Are the search engines coming? If you have chosen the Inktomi pay for inclusion or the Altavista express submission, this is easy enough as you will be notified per email when your site is indexed. If you have chosen not to go this route, or would like to know when other search engines spiders have visited, you will need to be able to analyze your log files or you will need some form of tracking script on your home page which will log visiting user-agents and IP numbers. There are free tracking services available which for the sake of normally a button link on your page you can get basic tracking statistics. This is the easiest method but it is also the most unprofessional. Business sites should most definitely avoid free online statistics, which allow the public to view your websites traffic in detail. Even a simple hit counter is considered unprofessional. You can pay in many cases for tracking that is password protected and does not require any form of button or banner. This is an excellent option if you have the budget. One downside is that you normally are required to place search engine unfriendly javascript on your page for the logging to take place.

Many web hosts include their own web tracking as part of their hosting package, we do. It is wise to check with your host if it is possible to view your statistics online.

Another option which provides more flexibility is to purchase or download try & buy versions of log file analysis software. The software does not come cheap. There are some free / shareware log file analyzers which for basic log file analysis purposes are fine. What these log file analyzers are particularly good for is checking for establishing if a search engine spider has visited.

You do need to know what the search engine spider uses as an IP address or user-agent. There is a good list of search engine user agents and ip addresses to be found here. Beware that some ip numbers/agents may be out of date from this list.

This search engine optimization tutorial has covered quite a lot of basic SEO know-how. If you understand and implement all of the search engine optimization tips and instructions, you can be pretty confident that your search engine ranking will rise to at least the top 50 of a search engine, regardless of your chosen keywords. Some of you may get lucky and reach a top 10 position solely from the know-how shared in this tutorial. Some of you may go over the line and inadvertently spam the search engines. This could mean your site being penalized, or worse, blacklisted.

We have only really covered the basics of search engine optimization. We constantly study the search engines for changes in algorithms and what thresholds they have with regards to keyword placement and many other factors which ensure we are always in a position to know, how far - is too far, as far as optimization is concerned.

If you have the time and the HTML programming skills, then you can achieve great results which will be acceptable to search engines. If you don't have the time, or are not prepared to risk your company's website from being penalized or banned, you may consider outsourcing to us for help. We have the expertise and the tools to get the job done safely and quickly. The ROI (return on investment) has never been better when it comes to search engine optimization. A steady stream of targeted traffic from professional search engine optimization, will beat banner advertisement for cost / hits ratio every time!

Outsourcing your entire web promotion / search engine optimization campaign not only allows you and your staff to concentrate on your business, but also gives you the peace of mind that experienced professionals are taking care of your site through search engine accepted methods.

It is the attention to detail and additional know-how, not within this tutorial, that can make the difference between a reasonable ranking and a top 5 Ranking.

We would welcome your feedback, good or bad. Suggestions for improvement to this search engine optimization tutorial, or for the website as a whole are valuable to us. You can contact us directly if you like. We will try to keep up with the constant changes which occur within the various main search engines and will keep you informed here.

We hope to see you in the top 10!


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