SEO Primer: Improve Your Business Website's Ranking
Written by Jason Rothbart / February 17, 2009 8:30 PM
/ 76 Comments
I'm going through an SEO overhaul of our company's website. There is definitely a combination of art and science that I never appreciated until having to do it. So, to save others some time, here are some very basic things that any business should do to optimize the ranking of its website in search engine results. Nothing explained here is necessarily a secret or difficult to find out. The trick is to find a good cookbook and a process that is easy to follow.
- Keywords. Decide on a manageable number of keywords to weave into the content of your website (I chose 10). This falls into the category of art. You need to think of words that people would potentially use to search for what you're offering, similar to the process you go through when starting an AdWords campaign. You need to climb into the brain of your customer and understand how he or she might try to find you. For example, our company often refers to itself as a SaaS company. However, potential customers might first think of the words "online" or "hosted," instead of SaaS. Tools exist that can help with this, but the end goal is to list important keywords.
- Site changes. Depending on what software or hosting services you use, you may need to tweak this process differently, but here are some general ways to influence how your site gets indexed:
- Page title. These are the words at the top of the browser window that describe the current page. Search engines look at these words. Be strategic here. For example, if you have a page devoted to a product that allows online document collaboration, don't use "Product" in the page title. Use "Online document collaboration" instead. Also, don't put your product name first. Search engines will hopefully already know what that is; they tend to look at the first three words, so make them the most important.
- H1 tags. Use the same strategy. Search engines prioritize H1 tags, so use important keywords here. Try to stick to one H1 tag per page.
- URLs. Same deal here: use keywords. For example, instead of http://mycompany.com/product, use http://mycompany.com/online-document-collaboration. Separating words with hyphens is best.
- Keyword density. Make sure to use your keywords in the body of your pages. Density is important; i.e. 2 keywords for every 5 words counts more than 2 for every 15.
- Meta description tags. This will sound redundant but... use keywords. This is also where you should put a 25-word description of your site. Search engines sometimes display this description under links in search results.
- Links. Link to other pages on your website, but (get ready for it!) use keywords. For our example, use "online document collaboration" as the link text, not "product name."
- Content. Create pages on your site that focus on your most important keywords and topics. And then link to those pages using the method described above. Do not copy content from other sites because this only confuses search engines.
- Link love. We all know that the more inbound links pointing to your site, the better. Get people to write and comment about your business. We also know that the quality of the site linking to yours is very important. What you may not know is that the words in links are important, too. Try to ensure that the text in those inbound links contains keywords; for example, use "business collaboration software" (see how I'm learning) instead of something generic like "click here."
You can do other, more technical things, like create an XML site map and submit it to search engines. Our company brought in SEO experts, and that can be very beneficial if you need help in this area. Regardless, the entire process makes you really focus on what your company does and how you describe it. It isn't easy, but it can pay great dividends with leads and site traffic. How do you practice SEO? Any tips or strategies that I missed?
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Completely disagree about the "Keyword density" thing. It is important to spread some keywords on your body text (beginning and end), but not a lot or it will look over-optimized. Writing/reading has to be natural. "2 keywords for every 5 words" would make any text horrible.
Avoid keyword stuffing and be very selective with the keywords in every page according to the site structure and the position of the page in that structure.
There are some good points in this primer it is quite easy to miss the obvious when doing SEO optimization and loose out on potential customers who are using search terms that would fit your site but are not optimized for it. Google webmaster tools can show you what google bot sees which can be very handy. The builtwith website optimizer can also be a helping hand to people who want to improve their SEO but do not know where to start. The site is available at http://optimizer.builtwith.com
Gary: Doesn't seem to work, the site gives me an alert filled with HTML source when I try to run the optimizer. Site used to check was straub dot ch
Hey Mark,
Thanks for that - you've identified a problem with the optimizer but there's also a potential issue with your site -
There's no site at straub.ch but there is one at www.straub.ch -
Non-authoritative answer:
*** Can't find straub.ch: No answer
Check it out at http://www.kloth.net/services/nslookup.php
Gary
Wow great post... I really liked it very much. esp inbound linking..
good post tho its missing LOADS of info.
Missing info like:
- use images give them a title and alternate text.
- short pages focused on one keyword
- lots of content as you won't know upfront what will score high on a search result page
- ...
It's imperative that you continualy review the ranking of your chosen search terms (keywords etc) to measure if you are moving up the rankings. Your wasting your time if you don't.
I would advise that you create a spreadsheet with all of your keywords and see where they are ranking on the search engines you want to target (i.e. page 5 etc, go up to page 20 if you have to). Also check when the page was last cached and record this as well. Then update your pages with the instructions in the post etc and then review if you are moving up the rankings every week. Last week page 5 this week page 4 etc. Remember to check the last cached date.
If you are not moving up the rankings then tweak the key words in your page titles and edit your content etc and keep measuring your page rankings.
If you are moving up the rankings then you will be inspired to increase your search terms and optimising your pages.
Sitemaps?
Robots.txt?
Micro formats?
was not quite insightful
Wow, thanks for the clues.. needed it very much.
We are Smart. We don't say that out of ego. We say that because we are experienced, knowledgeable, and continually informed on the latest state-of-the-art marketing and technology. CorporatePA was formed with the aim of bringing the best technical, creative, and business talents together to solve the marketing, web and technology needs of corporations and other organizations.
So.. what's the difference between hyphens and underscores? And why would one prevail over the other? And if that is true why is your blog using underscores?
nice observation Michael Plant :)
I think what most people tend to forget is that one finds two groups of websites...private persons and businesses. Within businesses, there are those that understand the great marketing opportunity of the Internet and those who do not. Those who do understand it and want to do something about it have two choices...1)try do-it-yourself and succeed (rare) and 2)do-it-yourself and fail. Then you need to go to the specialist as you would an ad agency or perhaps a dentist (hurts if you do it yourself).
The big problem is finding the specialist. I have found that in all professions there is an 80-20 rule. Twenty percent are bad; sixty percent are mediocre; and the top twenty percent are fairly good to excellent. But how do you know as a customer how good the specialist is before you use them (and they waste your hard-earned money?) I have found through all the years that a good (but not foolproof) way is to talk with the specialist. If they can explain what they do and why they do it in terms that you understand, then they may well know what they are doing. (It does not say they will do what they say, but it is a start.)
Try it...next time you are looking for a dentist :-)
Mark - Good beginner's primer but have to go with Ani on the content loading (careful buddy :).
Also ... ugh ... you might want to visit the copyright to the right of these comments. Didn't look at the source but 2009 might make it a little more relevant :)
Good Luck with the project!
Charlie
Many of those tips are very helpful to many I am sure. One thing that needs to be emphasized though is the time it takes to establish SEO results. Typically 4-6 months after initially implemented those SEO steps described in this post plus others, will you begin to see tangible results.
Back links (#3, link love) are the most important in the eyes of all search engines because these show that your site is useful to others so much so that they decided to credit your site just like this www.jocklife.com. There is a back link now that my site has on a very successful site, readwriteweb.com.
If you have video content, make sure all the steps are incoporated into a thumbnailed video on your site and not just leave the video as part of a player or search engines will never be able to find them. YouTube is a great model for individualized videos.
The only thing an SEO company will help you with is time, SEO work is very labor intensive and never ends. Do it yourself only if your opportunity costs are offset.
Sorry, this is not only very basic info, it's partly wrong as people have pointed out. I appreciate the approach and the will to do SEO at all but that's too superficial.
All,
Thanks for the comments. There are loads of things I didn't discuss in this on SEO as I am not expert. This is a PRIMER; it isn't meant to be the definitive work on the subject. If you are serious about SEO, then you should either learn more or engage an expert to help you.
On the question about hyphens, I have no idea why they are better. This is what our expert www.leadsloth.com told us. The blog is Wordpress and uses dashes as a default - I can't control it, at least I don't think.
Thanks.
Jason,
This is a fairly basic start, but I was hoping for more. At least thats what I concluded from the title.
If you are updating or totally revamping an existing site, you may be left with page names that are different from the originals. Other sites and search spiders will attempt to still reach those old pages.
You need to have a 301 method or plan in place on how to deal with those 404 requests for pages that are not there anymore. At very least, have a 404 page which tells the user that the site has changed and give them some information on how they can find what they are looking for. An advanced method is to send all the requests to a script that will attempt to programmatic ally match up the old pages to the new.
Hope this helps,
Jason Bartholme
I'm with a lot of the others here who are of the opinion that this article almost gives as much mis-information as valuable material.
Most experts in the application of SEO have discounted keyword density (as mentioned in a previous comment).
As you don't claim to be an expert in this discipline, you'd be better directing your readers to the real 'primer' that was published by Google.
Nice write up. We have been using some of those tips to our website http://www.happytutors.com and currently our Google Pagerank is PR2. We're happy about the result, considering HappyTutors is only less than 1 year old and we didn't use any SEO specialists' help.
HappyTutors.com
~ Connect Tutors with Student and Parents ~
I also follow most of the points that you've noted above. Also I follow these as well: Sitemaps & Robots.txt.
Also one has to make sure that the content of you website is updated on a regular basis.
hi
i believe this would be great if you now explain each of them...i am specially interested in contextual link building.
I feel the post had some good information but the keywords were a little much. If you use to many keywords the copy won't sound natural, and if it doesnt sound natural then the visitors you are getting won't convert. And thats the whole point of getting traffic anyways, to convert the traffic.
Still a good posting though.
SEO Experts, here’s something very interesting and helpful
http://www.dailyaffiliatearticles.com/
I am also wondering whether your key word density is too high? Is there a better happy medium?
I think this is a very useful post for people who are interesting in dipping their toe into the world of search engine optimization. There are loads of online resources if you've got the time to go through and search them out. My piece of advice would be to be careful of doing any one thing to much - this goes for keyword stuffing, linking and everything else - Google will look just as unfavourably on too much as too little. If you are interested in reading more about this then you can have a look at my Top 10 tips for better SEO.
Jason Some pretty good general SEO points,
One thing I personally disagree with is don't product name first. I have done the opposite with many products name then keywords to create a branding name recognition and they rank quite well, because the first 3 words Title tag don't count any more then the other words any word within the first 105 characters. I believe the Google parser just says the word or similar word is present or not present in the title or not and then adds a grade.
A few other things to consider, since you know that Keywords are the Key.
- Use images.
- Use Keywords in the names of the images (just like in your links).
- Use ALT tags with keyword descriptions for your images.
- Use Keywords in the directory paths (folder names) within your site structure.
Submit your site to internet directories:
DMOZ is mandatory.
Then find other directories specific to your industry.
Best Regards,
Chris Grayson
Art Director
Wow! I've worked really hard to improve our SEO score and reading this article shows me that there are still some things I need to improve on. Thanks!
About the hyphens and underscores, at one time some search engines would recognize a hyphen as separating two words better than an underscore. See: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/
I believe that this is outdated, but I can't find the article I read that explained why. But I believe I read directly from Matt Cutts' blog that it doesn't really matter anymore, that Google is smart enough to figure it out now.
Of course, becase it used to be like that, and because other search engines may not be as smart, most people opt for the advice that using hyphens is the safe choice.
Personally I use hyphens in urls, and I use underscores in things like image file names. For me it's just a convention that makes code slightly easier to read.
This is a great post. Search engine optimization is indeed vital in promoting a web site. Using seo techniques, you will succeed in internet marketing.
It's a pretty good beginning primer, but one thing that disturbs me is saying "keywords". This should be understood as a "key phrase". Look on the Wordtracker Keyword tool for a hierarchial (is that a word? ha) word like this:
If you are selling a book about training dogs, type in "dog book". The search results are presented in order of highest results. It could be "dog training books" or "books about training dogs" or "dog training manual" or many other things. Pick the phrase that most closely matches what you are selling, but gets the most searches.
Do NOT try to go after single words like "dog" or "book" or "training". You want the exact phrase. In your title, you would put 2-3 variations of the best phrases...like
Dog Training Book - How to train Your Dog - Training Manual
(assuming those are the best phrases - I didn't look)
Your keyword density on the entire homepage should be about 3-5%. If you go over that, and it's a competitive phrase, you'll get caught in a "filter" and never rank. I put my phrase in the title, a banner at the top that links to the DOMAIN NAME (not index.html) maybe one ALT text of a photo, the H1 tag, and no more than once or twice in the text. Try to think of synonyms that mean the same thing...like "canine" and "handbook" and write your content using synonyms.
Do not attempt to rank your homepage for more than 3-4 terms at the most. 2-3 is better. Pick the top three, and talk about them in the content. Make a full inside page for each, and LINK to it in that content.
Put one last link at the bottom of the page back to the Domain Name using the main term.
PS Dashes Vs Underscores - No search engine used to read an underscore as a space. So blue_widget would read as bluewidget...not a word, obviously. You should always use dashes. Blue-widget reads as "blue widget".
However, Matt Cutts has said that Google now recognizes the underscores...simply because OF the blogs that used them. However, Yahoo and MSN do not. So you should still always use dashes.
There is much more, but for On Page optimizing, this is a good beginning. Don't forget to make a blog to go with your site, preferably a part of the site, and write in it regularly, using your keywords and linking to those pages and the site from them.
Great stuff everyone. A couple of points that caught my eye:
1. The key word/phrase stuff is critical, but this is where the art comes in. You need to weave them into the content of the site, not just repeat them. It serves little purpose to have great SEO, bring customers to your site, and then piss them off with unreadable pages
2. The density comment I made wasn't literal. You should not repeat key words every 5 words in a sentence. However, I don't agree with the posters who say it isn't important. It is logical to assume the search engines factor key word density into the equation somehow. It makes sense that if they see a page where a phrase is mentioned multiple times, that page is very focused on that phrase and is likely to earn a higher page ranking.
3. This is an ongoing process, not a one shot deal. We are doing the first wave on www.groupswim.com, but we are just getting started
4. There is much more to SEO than I described (as several commenters so ably pointed out). If you are serious about it, do your research or get some help
Hope all this helps you.
Great advice, especially point one. Many businesses fail to spend enough time choosing their niche and instead plough head-long in to extremely competitive markets; they are almost always disappointed with SEO results.
My advice has always been, pick a few niche topics and build up from there.
The big problem is finding the specialist. I have found that in all professions there is an 80-20 rule.
Good stuff - simple and practical. Just how I like it
thanks! i am writing a basic intro for some elementsinc.net clients and have found all these that you list to be common denominators, especially for natural search rankings. SEO is still overwhelming - it's taken me a while to sort it all out and how everything works together - our clients still think if their domain name contains key words, they'll come up #1 in a search result. it's an uphill battle and i have long way to go in getting them better-informed. your article will help a lot!
"Our company brought in SEO experts, and that can be very beneficial if you need help in this area." - Very insightful, as most businesses do not have time to spend on SEO but do know that it is an essential part of business promotion. Miles Technologies offers expert Search Engine Optimization services to help businesses increase their website traffic and revenue.
Do you different blogging platforms have more effective SEO capabilities over others?
Some good useful guides here.
Cool! My old business started up with just a little money, so I know how far the concept can go! Thanks SR for helping others.
Top SEO Company
I have been starting SEO on a Joomla site and it seems the more complex the underlying technology the worse it is for SERP posistion. Thanks for the info, im looking into solutions for each of the topics.
Ooooh thanks a lot, every webmaster should know this rules to get a good page rank for his website
Thank you so much
I agree on the inbound links however it is so time consuming (and boring!). Does anyone know of a good company that manually submits to the major free directories?
Wow, I am definitely impressed with the information contained within this article.Thanks for posting.
From my personal experience i can say that there is trend where Developers are ignoring keyword density which according to me is a major player.
for an example think like a customer who is looking to buy "HP Notebook" so what will google search ?
1. Page where "HP Notebook" is mentioned only once OR
2. Page where "HP Notebook" is mentioned 5-8 times
Which one will bring better search result for that customer?
Google is customer friendly search engine so think about KD very properly or you won't reap the search engine benefits which you are looking for.
This is one primer that is worth checking and re-checking, and this resource is a good recommendation too to other interested publishers. Thanks for sharing the list of suggestions.
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