|
|
monstercreations Regular user England 116 Posts |
Hi,
Now this might seem like I'm teaching Granny to suck eggs but a couple of people have asked for some SEO tips. I'm not an SEO guru by any means but I do know some of the basics and if you stick by them and with some hard slog you can't go too far wrong! Some SEO basics... - Site Content - text should reflect in a relevant way what your business is about! Content is King! - Domain names - Make certain where at all possible that the domain name contains the keyword(s) that you would like to rank for. - Keyword Research - use tools like Word-tracker to find those keywords that will bring traffic to your website. - Update your site with new and unique content. - Inbound Links - Get those back-links into your site - get links relevant to you though! - Website code - make sure it's seo compliant. - Label your images on your site. - Social media - Twitter and facebook - if you got them use them! Here are a few things not to do... - Don't duplicate content on your pages - Don't use keyword stuffing - Make sure your page is not overflowing with keywords. - Don't use unreadable content - Ensure that your meta titles, descriptions, header tags and body text are written in a way that flows and is readable. - Don't use hidden text or links made especially for search engines. Obviously just google SEO hints and tips and all the info is there. Ade |
Dynamike Eternal Order FullTimer 24148 Posts |
Plus:
- Meta Tags - Meta Tag Description - Blogs |
Donald Dunphy Inner circle Victoria, BC, Canada 7563 Posts |
Donald Dunphy is a Victoria Magician, British Columbia, Canada.
|
gomerel Elite user 458 Posts |
My understanding is that meta tag keywords are useless. Work keywords into your text, toward the top of the page.
Make sure your site is usable. E.g., see Jakob Nielsen http://www.useit.com/. |
Tim Zager Loyal user Kansas City 222 Posts |
Quote:
- Domain names - Make certain where at all possible that the domain name contains the keyword(s) that you would like to rank for. Be careful here. This may no longer be true and could hurt your SEO. Explained here: http://bit.ly/PUzTFb |
Bill Hilly Elite user 449 Posts |
I read that article. So if I do a search for "Ford trucks" does that mean that http://www.ford.com and http://www.ford-trucks.com will not be near the top of the list? What the heck good is that? I think Google could eventually screw itself with that kind of over thinking.
|
Carducci Special user Denver 543 Posts |
Everything is weighted, nothing is absolute. Search engines bots are not self-aware and cannot truly interpret what your page is about and how relevant it is, but they can make a very estimated guess.
If you web site is coded correctly, it is just a document, with a title, sections, headers, paragraphs and media (images/video). It also has an address and links pointing to it. The search engine will analyze what content is where and give it a weighted score. If your domain is http://www.ford.com, it is likely that the pages there are about "ford" (which is meaningless to as search engine) but that counts towards it's relevance for the term "ford" (but does not move it to the top of the list by any means) Then it looks at the page itself, again the title is important. If you title the page "Ford Cars and Trucks" again, that is a very good indication that the page is about "Ford", "Cars", and "Trucks" The search engine will read the document and look at headings (not big bold text, but html markup indicating what is a heading) A key word in a h1 (top level heading) tag would indicate that the following section is going to be about that key word. This the same way we would assume that the headline on a news paper is a good indication of what the rest of the article is about. Then it looks at the paragraph level content and gets statistics about the different words in there. These keywords have the least "weight" in other words, they have a small amount of effect on the overall relevance score. Images are also important (if they use the "alt" attribute) the "alt" attribute is a description of your image, which will be displayed if the image doesn't load, or that will be used to describe the picture to a blind internet user with a screen reader. Search engines look at those descriptions of the image and, on ford.com, it might say "Ford F150 Truck on a mountain" Again, the search engine would interpret that as hits for "Ford, F150, Truck, Mountain." Each keyword means more or less based on where it is in the document and how that document marked up. Keywords in a title, domain, or heading rank higher than keywords in paragraphs, but it all adds up to a good statistical look at what a document is about, and giving it a quantifiable score as to how relevant a document is to a given search. In most modern search engines, though, the most important factor is inbound links. This was the original concept that the google guys pioneered in their PhD thesis and what made google so much better than the existing search engines when they came out. Google looks at who is linking to your site, what they are saying about that link, and how reputable the linker is. Each link to your site is like a vote for your site. It's a reasonable assumption that people on the internet with good content, will link to other good content. The text of the link is also important. If your keywords are in your links, it helps a lot. This is so important, people occasionally abuse this to "google bomb." This is why, for so long, typing the search "Miserable Failure" into google would return George W. Bush's white house profile as the #1 result. "Miserable failure" was not in the page at all, but there were many thousands of links with that text, pointing to that page. Search engines also have a lot of technology to sniff out obvious attempts to circumvent this type of thing. Keyword stuffing, etc will lose you points. There are also many myths about SEO like "google loves blogs" or "google loves wordpress" Google actually likes regularly updating content, and inbound links. You get both of these with a good blog, but you get the same thing from wikipedia. Wordpress is a fine CMS, but won't score you any more points than an html page site would. Hope this helps. |
MikeClay Special user Atlanta GA 761 Posts |
The "Exact Match" penalty only kicks in (this is based off testing and not the sleight of mind google gives out) when the domain and CONTENT are over optimized for the Exact match keyword..
In other words... USE LSI Keywords (related Keywords) in your content along with the primary. to do that is easy if you use a tool like inboundwriter.com to help you with writing you content and you put at least 3 to 5 phrases into your content OTHER than the primary keyword.
its ok.. balloon dogs don't bite
|
Bill Hilly Elite user 449 Posts |
Carducci,
That DOES help. Thanks. That's a good tutorial there. |
MichaelDouglas Special user Portland, Oregon 766 Posts |
Michael Clay, thanks for the tip about inboundwriter.com
Michael Carducci that's a great primer on how SEO works. Thanks for sharing it. |
Carducci Special user Denver 543 Posts |
My pleasure! Always happy to help
|
The Magic Cafe Forum Index » » Tricky business » » SEO tips.. (0 Likes) |
[ Top of Page ] |
All content & postings Copyright © 2001-2024 Steve Brooks. All Rights Reserved. This page was created in 0.04 seconds requiring 5 database queries. |
The views and comments expressed on The Magic Café are not necessarily those of The Magic Café, Steve Brooks, or Steve Brooks Magic. > Privacy Statement < |