SEO - Search engine optimization.Search Engine Optimization is the technique of modifying or building a website's content and information to achieve an organic or natural search engine results page ranking position by utilizing specific keywords in the appropriate manner. It includes components such as: Description, Meta-tags, alt tags, keywords in URL (subdirectories and subdomains), page descriptions, etc etc.Contrary to popular belief, basic SEO is not as complex as web firms lead you to believe. This web pages information and page properties improvements/suggestions alone are probably enough to significantly improve your websites overall ranking and placement.The key component of SEO is your websites overall design, layout, and content. Remember, just because your sister's 14 year old son can build a web page with a copy of Front Page Express, doesn't mean it's going to generate results from local folks searching the web for your product/service. It takes a good understanding of local search to ensure your site gets its fair share of the local search opportunities.Knowing the ins and outs of SEO is your best shot of getting listed. keywords and where to put them is the key to great SEO.On to Search Engine Optimazation 101: Simple stuff......... really!for additional Dallas SEO tips & link popularity information click here Most Important FactorsThe following are believed to be the top 10 ranked SEO factors:
What's the importance of all this?:Link Popularity:More and more search engines are using link-popularity as a ranking method (Google is the originator of this technique). Under this system the ranking of your site depends in part on how many other pages link to yours, and how important those links are. That means that a secondary benefit of getting a link on major indexes is that it can improve your ranking on some search engines. You can even hurry this along by, for example, submitting the pages containing your listings to the search engines! This shows you pages that point to that URL. For example, on the google search bar type the following: link:www.google.com will show you pages that point to Google's home page. You cannot combine a link: search with a regular keyword search. So try the following: link:www.yoursite.com Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community - (The link weight/authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world) – " I've seen one of my sites goes from #39 to #1 right after I got 1 link... from the #1 spot on the keyword I was trying to get" Title:Google places a huge amount of importance on this tag. Have your main keyword or keyphrase in here. If your a regional operation than place the location of your business here too. Anchor text:Anchor text in Google is very very important, in fact anchor text combined alone with a similar title tag can sometimes be enough to get your site high in the rankings without the actual term(s) appearing on the page itself. Anchor text may be external links which others make to you or internal links which link page to page on your site. Anchor text is not to be confused with Pagerank. First few lines of text on page:Vital to Google and many other engines, generally just a rewrite of your title and meta description tags, include your keywords of course. Heading tags:I have seen plenty of sites which have good rankings without the use of any heading tags, similarly plenty of sites which do use them also have good rankings. I do though feel Google does place extra weight to words found within these tags. A h1 or h2 right as the first bit of text on a page should work great but try and work your keywords into h3 and h4 on a continuous basis throughout the whole page. Main body content:Google loves content, within your content try and have a keyword density of 5-10% (that's what works for me). This keyword density should be well spread out over the page and not clumped together (spam trigger) Bolded words may have a bit more weight but Im not certain, make some of your keywords bold anyhow as it can't hurt. Keyword Rich URL:Other elements which maybe effect your ranking include keyword rich URL's:Simply URL's that have content specific Keywords in the address. This can also be done on the subdomains/subdirectories such as: www.yoursite.com/keyword_rich_words.htm or www.keyword.yoursite.com etc.....Pagerank:I wasn't really sure where to put pagerank as I don't think it's as important as many people feel it is. It still vital to good ranking though. It's basically a measure of how many and how good the incoming links to your site and sites pages are. The higher the better, but a high pr won't always beat a lower page rank in the SERPS. Page rank is only a small part of a very big cake.......(The Google Algorithm Cake ). Summary:When developing your website it is wise to ensure that you use your keyword phrases are in the following areas of your website:Title Tag, Meta Description (different for each keyword optimized page of your website), Meta Keywords, Headings and Anchor Text (links to your website). Most folks in the industry call this "Page Properties" |