- Step 1. Choosing The Right Keywords
Choosing the right keywords to base your site optimization
around is an important first step. General or generic
keywords are usually not the best approach, and sometimes
it's better to be a little more specific and focus on
niche keywords relating to your product or service.
For example, let's talk about www.devedit.com -- DevEdit
is our WYSIWYG HTML editing component that drops into
browser-based applications.
The problem is, there are a LOT of WYSIWYG HTML editors,
but how can we get DevEdit to appear in Google's top
10 rankings? Well, let's see. Trying to optimize for
the keyword "HTML" alone would
be a tough task, as it's too general. There are HTML
editors, HTML tutorials, HTML articles, etc.
We need to be more specific, which means:
1. targeting a more suitable market that is looking
for a content editing solution
2. competing with fewer websites targeting the same
keywords
3. optimizing for keywords that people actually use
when performing searches
Targeting a suitable market will depend on your website,
as well as the products and services you offer. Try
to be specific with your keywords, and remember that
people no longer use single keyword search phrases -
the average search phrase contains 3-5 related words.
For example, if you're optimizing for a web development
site and you're located in Sydney, Australia, use keywords
such as "web development Sydney" or "web
development services Australia".
To find out how many websites are competing with your
keywords -- either intentionally or not -- simply do
a search on Google and note down how many results are
returned. In our case, for "online html editor",
we're competing with 9,080,000 sites. The more sites
that are competing for your keywords, the harder it
will be to get on the front page.
Alternatively, to get a rough indication of how many
people are actually searching for the keywords you want
to optimize your site for, use the Overture search suggestion
tool. It's not exact, and doesn't measure Google searches,
but it does give a very good estimate:
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
The Overture search suggestion tool will also provide
you with a list of similar keywords, based on the keywords
you enter. This can be a great way to find other keywords
to optimize your site for.
As a rough guideline, try to optimize every page on
your site for a different search phrase. Each search
phrase should contain 2 to 3 highly targeted keywords.
-
Step 2. Your URL and Title Tag
Two of the most determining factors in Google's ranking
are your domain name and title tag. For example, a domain
name such as: http://www.web-development-sydney.com
will generally get ranked higher than http://www.companyname.com,
assuming that they had identical keywords and page content.
For some of us, keywords in the domain name look too
unprofessional, and we've already registered our domain,
so its too late to change. An alternative -- and also
a useful tactic -- is to add your keywords into the
names of your pages, such as http://www.companyname.com/web-development-services.html
Your title tag is equally as important as your domain
name. Using keywords in your title tag can improve your
Google ranking significantly. Trying to achieve a balance
of professionalism with keyword density in the title
tag however, is sometimes a little more difficult.
Going back to our example of a web development company
earlier, a good title tag would be:
<title>"Company name provides professional
affordable web
development services in Sydney Australia."</title>
Usually, the closer to the front of your title tag
the keywords are placed, the better.
-
Step 3. H1 Tags and Keyword Density
<h1> tags seem to have been depreciated by stylesheets
these days, and are not used as often as they used to
be.
The Google ranking algorithm dictates that if you're
using a <h1> tag, then the text in between this
tag must be more important than the content on the rest
of the page. Here's a quick example:
<h1>Google sees this text as more important</h1>
<p>... than this text</p>
By default, H1 tags aren't the prettiest in terms of
formatting, so using a CSS style to override the default
look is usually a good idea:
H1 { color: blue; font-family: Verdana; font-size:
16px }
Sprinkling keywords throughout your page content can
also improve your sites keyword density. Keyword density
simply means the ratio of optimized keywords to the
rest of the content on your page. It is usually expressed
as a percentage, and should be between 7% and 10% for
each page on your site.
Don't overdo the keyword density, however, but don't
overlook it either. A good example would be:
BEFORE
Company name provides web design and site management
services to our clients.
AFTER
Company name provides web development services to the
Sydney region in Australia
Notice how we use the keywords more efficiently the
second time around?
-
Step 4. Links, Links and More Links
And this leads us to the toughest part of the Google
SEO process -- back-links. Back links are websites that
link directly to your website. The general principal
is the more back links you have, the higher your pages
will be ranked, as your website must be good if so many
other sites are linking back to it.
If you run a web development company, then adding a
simple link to the bottom of each of your client's websites,
such as:
<a href=http://www.yoursite.com>Web development
by Company Name</a>
... (with your clients permission of course) can help
boost your back links, which will help boost your ranking
position in searches.
Submitting your site to dmoz.org (http://www.dmoz.org/),
Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com/) and other directories
is also an important step to increase the number of
sites linking back to yours. Do remember however, that
setting up back links takes time. I would recommend
emailing 5-10 websites each and every
day to request back-links or partnership links (keeping
in mind that the sites contacted should be relevant
but not competitive) eg. - If you sell chocolate, partnering
with a company that sells Roses may just be a good idea.
Within a couple of weeks, you should have a good 100
or so sites happily linking back to yours!
Conclusion
Hopefully in this article I've given you a good outline
of how to get started with Google search engine optimization
for your site. Good luck and hope you get Google'd :)
================================================================
Eddie Machaalani and Mitchell Harper are the lead developers
at
Interspire (http://www.interspire.com/). They provide
web
developers with powerful, re-brandable web tools and
free web
templates ((http://www.myfreetemplates.com/) to help
them
increase their customer base and increase revenue.
================================================================
Read more:
- BEGINNERS GUIDE - START HERE
- GOOGLE PAGE RANK & HOW
TO GET IT
- GOOGLE PAGE RANK IN 7 DAYS
- GOOGLE ADWORDS GUIDE
- HIGHER SEARCH ENGINE RANKINGS
- RANK HIGH IN GOOGLE
- COMPLETE WEBSITE OPTIMIZATION
- IMPROVED SEARCH ENGINE
RANKS
- GETTING YOUR WEBSITE LISTED
SEARCH
ENGINE INFORMATION RELEASED JULY 2005