SEO Tips and Tricks – practical advice. | interactive-marketing.info

SEO Tips and Tricks – practical advice.

Posted on September 20th, 2008 by admin

The first trick to SEO is that there are no tricks. Actually, there are, but the risk outweighs the benefit. This is proof Mama was right. Be honest, have integrity, do the right thing, and you’ll come out ahead.

This article covers the principles, the engines, the main authoring techniques, touches on link building and provides lots of links to useful resources to keep up with the ever changing cat-and-mouse game played between optimisers and search engines.

THE BAD

Visit the Google Webmaster tools (Webmaster Help Center) section on search engine optimisation and you’ll find, amongst a wealth of information, a basic list of bad doing. But, to most people in the industry, this is really old news. Nevertheless, check and see if anybody is recommending those techniques. First warning.

There are other Black Hat SEO techniques, that include stealing ip’s, stealing listings, stealing traffic, but it all boils down to stealing. Clients are demanding, but most will get cranky if you start stealing in their name. Terminally cranky.

Don’t buy the load of rubbish going around, I’m sure you’ve seen it, SEO Optimisation PLATNIUM! We submit your site to 40,000 search engines for only $300! Firstly, submission is not optimisation, secondly, right now, only a few search engines really matter. More often than not, tools like this are interpreted by the search engines as spam, and can land your web site in a bad place. Like most things, if its too good to be true….

Another common myth is “meta tags”. Too many people in customer land think that its simply a matter of adding meta tags, and off you go. Sorry, if only it were that easy. Back in the 90′s….maybe…. Too easy to cheat, too easy to lie. Ever search for Laser printer and get a porno site? Laser printer was a popular search term back than. Bad doing.

THE GOOD

Which Search Engines?

Google, Yahoo, AOL, MSN (Windows live), The Open Directory (DMOZ) and Ask. That about covers it – this week. Google is the benchmark. Your content may be relevant to a specialised search engine as well, and you’ll discover that soon enough when you start testing your key words. Keep a short list if you come across any. Most submissions are free, but you can pay for expedited service as well. They pick each others brains too.

Here is a list of search engine market share from ComScore:

Source: http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2119

The Principles

The first and most basic fundamental to search engine optimisation is be honest. Be accurate. This is closely followed by the second fundamental, stay on message.

OK, great, thanks Mama. Lots of help, eh? Keep reading…

Be Honest

Don’t try to grab traffic that isn’t related to your message. Your information is your product. People who want widgets will look for widgets and it really isn’t kosher to bring in people who want digits. You may get a traffic increase, but you won’t get the density of qualified traffic that makes the difference to your customer. Short term gain may cost you long term fame.

The twin to this principle is to be accurate. Know your product, optimise for exactly what you have to offer. Be it products for sale, services, or information, if you optimise accurately for what you have to offer, your relevancy will be superior, and thus your listing will be more highly rated in that category.

So, still saying, ‘OK Mama, blah…blah..blah….” you reckon? Read on….

Stay on message.

Ok, here are some SEO tools, some how-to optimise techniques, some useful search engine optimisation guidelines you can implement yourself.

1. Keywords

Select your keywords with care and diligence. Easier said than done. I usually start with an off-the-top-of-my-head mega list of keywords, than start reducing, focusing, and verifying their relevance.

A good keyword is a word that is used by your potential visitors in their searches. How would potential visitors describe your content? What categories does your content fall into? What is your localisation? Are their adjectives that are unique to your content? Is it popular, or is it niche? There are lots of tools to help, keyword generators, keyword selectors, search tools to test the popularity of keywords.

Overture Keyword Tool

Check your keywords for competition

But, don’t let the tail wag the dog. Lets go back to the first principle, be honest, be accurate. You may discover great keywords, too bad, they may not relate to your content. This may not be a bad thing, because it may demonstrate that your keywords are not in a dense category, i.e. there may not be much competition.

Fat head, long tail.

The principle of the Fat head and the The Long Tail. Basically, there will be some keywords that are hotly contested, especially in dense categories, words that tend to be more general. Likewise, there are other keywords and phrases that are more niche market related, and thus less contested, words that tend to be more specific. I have a customer in the office furniture category, a boutique supplier of high end, designer products. He has to contest with the mega shops in the dense “Office furniture” category. However, one of his specialty products is the world renowned Erich Keller Trading Desk. He doesn’t do so well in the Office Furniture category, but comes first page in the Trading Desk category. The customers looking for these specialty products are often also in need of additional office furniture to compliment their specialty desks. I think you get the point.

2. Meta Tags.

Old news. Nevertheless, do your propers and make sure you have a Meta Description and Keyword tag.

Meta Description

Remember principle 2, “Stay on Message”. Make your description short enough to be complete in the search result. Around 200 characters is good, make sure the first few words catch your visitors’ attention with your main content. Use your keywords and phrases. Be honest, be accurate.

Meta Keywords

Pick your best keywords for your keyword meta tag. Do not repeat the same word over and over. Big mistake. Don’t fill a page. Too diluted. Most search engines don’t read it, so don’t spend too much time on the keywords tag.

Meta Robots

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Using the robots meta tag

Make sure you have a robots meta tag and “robots.txt” file. These help the spiders crawl your site and index your content. Read up. Recently, a new feature has been allowed in the robots.txt file, which is a link to a sitemap.

Sitemaps are increasing in importance in the SEO scheme, they provide an alternative navigation method to your pages for spiders to follow. This will be increasingly important if your content is dynamically generated, or if it is hidden behind a Flash navigation device.

OK, now lets move onto your content.

3. Copy

Once again, be honest, be accurate, stay on message. When you went through the keyword selection phase, you probably discovered you can say the same thing several ways. Fat head vs long tail you might think? Yes and no. That should be taken care of at the Keyword and phrase stage. Say the same thing the same way, the most accurate way, the most honest way. This will increase your keyword density on that given topic and let the public know that your pages are rich in this content. Fat head and long tail will take care of themselves.

Good Search Engine Optimisation Tips:

1. URL’s with your keywords are strongest.

2. Page titles and links come next.

3. Anything with an “H” tag comes next, especially H1

4. Don’t forget image alt tags, title tags and other opportunities. For example, its not a picture of a “desk”, its a picture of an “Erich Keller Trading Desk from ABC Corp”.

4. Links

This is the hard part. Links. Search engine spiders live for links. Links are a fundamental, the cornerstone of the web. Links mean good web fu. Hyperlinks in the body of copy that take you to related content are useful to the reader, and thus make your content more useful. Links from outside sites to your site are votes of confidence from the web world for the value of your content. Links are good, cultivate them, but avoid link farms. Its like hanging out with shady characters, it casts you likewise in a shady light.

Here’s where you may refer back to that list of niche search engines you discovered when you were testing your keywords. Submit to them as well. It all goes to creating that critical mass of “findability.”

Getting to understand Google Page Rank is a good recommendation at this point.

Pagerank Explained. Google’s PageRank and how to make the most of it.

Again, like Mama says, be honest, be accurate, stay on message.

Conclusion

So, you’re armed now with Principles.
You can select good keywords and phrases.
You do your propers with the meta data.
You write your content to be relevant and focused on message.
What next? Well, review, monitor, manage and edit. Its not a one trick pathway to page one.

Needless to say, there are some skills involved, born of experience and familiarity with the process. Every good optimiser has their own little secrets as well. This is the process I go through for my clients. Fortunately, I’m a writer, as well as a code geek and marketer. I live for this stuff.