Domain Name Selection
If you think the selection process and the name you have chosen for that shiny new domain name won’t make any difference in the search rankings of your new or existing website, think again.
Today more than ever, all search engines do carry a lot of weight to the keywords that are present in your domain name. Ask any SEO professional that has been in this business for at least three or four years and they will tell you that the careful research and the final selection of the domain name you will use can have a tremendous positive impact in the search results pages from Google, AltaVista, Fast-all-the-Web, Yahoo, MSN, Inktomi, DMOZ, etc.
First Things First
When you need to register a new domain name for an existing site or a new site under construction, the first thing you need to do is decide if it will be a .com, a .net or a .ca domain name, or any other variations, as there are many. (Note: .ca domain names are reserved for Canadian companies only). Whether you’re looking to reserve a domain name for use now or at a later date, you should seriously consider doing it now, while a good selection might still be available, although I think the best choices in the .com range have already been taken by now.
I have found and personally registered some good domain names in the .com, .biz, .cc, .ca and .ws category. The choice is yours. Remember that the extension is not important. All search engines today all treat domain names equally, with no preference if they are of the .com, .net, .org, .us, .ca, .biz or any other extension there is. What IS important are the keywords between the venerable ‘www’ and the extension!
Hyphenated Domain Names or Un-hyphenated?
If you really want to score high and closer to the top in the search engines, then try to get a domain name that has one or two (or three) of your most important keywords in it, as it will greatly help you in the results pages when people type in keywords that are closely associated with the theme of your site.
Also, for that extra ‘punch’ in the search engines, I suggest that you put a hyphen in between them, such as this: www.your-main-keywords.com
Most major search engines today treat hyphenated domain names as separate words. If these separate words happen to be your most important keywords, you are ahead of the pact. Since some will tell you that hyphens in domain names look awkward and I fully agree, if you can, try also registering the non-hyphenated version too, such as this one: www.yourmainkeywords.com
On your website, for the search engines, it is best to host the hyphenated version on your server or host provider. On your business cards, brochures or print catalogues, it is best to use the non-hyphenated version. Just make sure you are using a “301 server re-direct” command just for that purpose, since it can be a bit touchy if not done correctly.
Today, some search engines, notably Google, are very critical of server re-direct commands and might penalize a site if not done correctly. The only safe and recommended technique I use is the “301 server re-direct” command, which is a very standard Linux command. Avoid using a Java script. You should consult your Web hosting provider with this if you are uncomfortable in doing it yourself.
If you would like an example of how this is done, look at the search engine I have built at: www.globalbusinesslisting.com. Notice that once you arrive at my search engine, the URL changes to the hyphenated version: www.global-business-listing.com which is a real bonus as far as the search engines are concerned. The added expense is well worth it.
An alternative you can try is to have a domain name registered in the name of your company, such as www.yourcompanyname.com, where you could use on your business cards, your letterhead, etc.
However, as in the example above, you should use a “301 server re-direct” command to www.your-most-important-keywords.com domain name, for added visibility in the search engines. Remember that search engines don’t care much about company names, brand names or trademarks. What they are really looking for are industry keywords and key phrases that people type in their search box. Unless you are a well-known Fortune 500 company that is very popular with a branded trademark that is universally known, I would stick with the above.
Not Ready Yet?
If you aren’t ready to build your website right away, there are also many additional options that can be added to any registered domain name at any time, such as the ability to:
• Set the domain name on a server with a “Coming Soon” page
• Temporarily re-direct the domain name to another of your choice
• Temporarily re-direct to a subdirectory of another domain name
• Start using your new domain name email address (highly recommended)
• Add relevant body text & keywords to your “Coming Soon” page
Your Legal Rights And Proof Of Ownership
From time to time, I hear about some domain names, mistakenly or otherwise, of not having been registered in the name of their rightful owners. Even if it’s just an oversight, rectifying this situation can become time consuming and costly, especially from a legal standpoint. Some domain names can be worth a lot of money. Before finalizing your domain name order, make sure it will be registered in your name or in the name of your company, if that is what you prefer. Better be safe now than sorry later.
Also, the administrative person (normally you), technical contact and billing contacts will be determined by you only at the time you are registering your new domain name (s).
Be sure to own your own domain name because you can have a website without owning your own domain name. Some ISPs and other organizations offer free web addresses for certain websites. Often these are easy to get and use, but there are important benefits to having your own domain name, such as:
1. Branding – Your web site address can be a valuable brand name for you. You want people to remember it and use it on a regular basis, with each use acting as additional brand reinforcement. You lose that strong identity if your visitors have to type something like www.yourcompany.ispname.othername.com
2. Independence – Should your ISP or hosting service provider no longer meet your needs or goes out of business for any reason, you will have to move your site’s URL and traffic along with the physical transfer of your site’s server IP address. After all, you have invested time and money to build traffic, so you shouldn’t have to start all over again simply because your needs change or for whatever other reason. In the Internet world, registered domain names are associated with name servers.
When you decide to change the location of your web site, your new name servers will be updated in the who-is record kept by your domain registrar. As a result, your site visitors will automatically be sent to your new host. The bottom line is that you keep all your traffic and all your sales. If you don’t own your domain name, you will not have the luxury of taking your traffic with you. The many benefits far outweigh the added expense of a domain name. All you need to do to change from one host provider to another is simply to change the name servers at your domain name registrar- a simple, one minute process that is very easy to do at most registrars.
3. Promotion – Your company or business alone gets to enjoy the increased traffic from every dollar spent promoting your site. If you don’t have your own domain name, the company associated with your website name will instead reap the benefits of your promotional efforts.
Conclusion
The careful selection and wording of your domain name is one of the most critical part of the initial steps in setting up any website, old or new. As I have discussed above, it can have a drastic impact in the search engine results pages (SERP’s). In some extreme cases, and depending on the competitiveness of your industry, it could almost mean the difference between success and failure of your site, as far as its visibility in the search engines is concerned.
Once you have a domain name that was correctly chosen, both for your most important keywords and possibly your branding, what’s left is the careful optimization of your site to ensure all that added visibility in the search engines.
Consider a business website just as any other business asset. It is an un-tangible, marketable title of property that can grow considerably in value and it should become an important ally to your business, while at the same time assist you in your long-term promotional efforts.
Author:
Serge Thibodeau of Rank For Sales
Hypertext Links
Search engine robots are not terribly sophisticated. They cannot click a button, submit a form, pull down a menu, or perform any other type of online “user interaction” that might be used by a human visitor. Robots are able to index the text on a page and click through hypertext links. For this reason, adding navigational text links to your web pages (often located at the bottom of the page) provides the search engine robots with another means to click through the links of your web pages when it cannot access these other types of navigation.
No matter how great your JavaScript menu system is, the search engine robots cannot use it. They can follow “plain old” hyperlinks, and that’s about it. Since the ability to move around on your site is vital to the robots’ successful indexing of your content, you want to make it as easy as possible for them to visit all of your pages. Use of text links at the bottom of your pages, while hardly cutting-edge, is one of the best ways to make sure that the search engine robots can move around on your site. Be sure to include links to your site’s principal pages on all the pages in your site. Always remember to put a link to your sitemap page here too.
Sitemaps
A sitemap page is a supercharged version of the bottom-of-the-page hypertext links. The sitemap provides “food” for a hungry search engine robot. A sitemap page will at very least have links to all of the major pages on your site. Depending on the size of your site, it may actually link to all of your pages. This means that once the robot gets to the sitemap page, it can visit every page on your entire site. Having all of the content of your site included in the search engine database is a good thing: you are much more likely to come-up in the search engine results when somebody is performing a search related to your topic.
A good sitemap will:
• Provide text links to at least the most important pages on your site; depending on the size of the site, it may have links to every page
• Give a short explanation of each page on your site, to inform your visitors about your website
• Give your visitors the information they need when lost in your website, and show them how to reach the page they are looking for
• Provide a pathway for the search engine robots to follow in order to reach your most important pages
• Provide important keyword phrases in the sitemap text and hypertext links that help the automated search engine robot “understand” what the page is about
• Help search engine robots find static landing pages that then link to dynamically generated pages they may not otherwise find
Even if your website is small, add a sitemap for your visitors and for the search engine robots.
To make your sitemap most attractive to the search engine robots and your human visitors, be sure to include descriptive text along with the page URLs and links. Use your keywords in that text, including appropriate content for each of the pages to which you link. Be careful not to overuse your keyword phrases, though, or you may be penalized in the rankings. Remember that this is a map that will be used by both search engine robots and your human visitors. If the content of the page makes sense to the people who visit your site, chances are it will make sense to the visiting robots as well.
When you make it easy for your visitors to navigate your site, they will find what they are looking for. When you make it easy to search engine robots to move around on your site, you increase your chances of being favorably listed in their search results.
Author Bio:
Daria Goetsch is the founder and Search Engine Marketing Consultant for Search Innovation Marketing (http://www.searchinnovation.com), a Search Engine Promotion company serving small businesses. Besides running her own company, Daria is an associate of WebMama.com, an Internet web marketing strategies company. She has specialized in search engine optimization since 1998, including three years as the Search Engine Specialist for O’Reilly & Associates, a technical book publishing company.
Link Building That Makes Sense: Who To Link To
When you are building links to increase your link popularity, who do you link to? The question of where to link to increase ranking can be confusing. Logical thinking is needed to achieve link popularity in a natural way.
Google PageRank
First and foremost, PageRank is part of the algorithm of Google’s ranking in the search engine results. Other search engines use link popularity in their algorithm to evaluate your website as well. But PageRank is only one of the 100 plus criteria Google uses to evaluate your web pages. Use the idea of PageRank as a “tool” to help make decisions, there’s no need to live and die by the results. Link popularity itself is merely one way to improve your ranking.
Should You Link To Them?
Think about it. You see a quality website, you see good content. The site is a “Mom and Pop” website with little ranking. So what if the Google Toolbar says PageRank 2/10? That 2/10 may one day be 8/10. More importantly, you are linking to it because it is good to link to for your visitors – end of story.
Reciprocal Linking Fears
There is a general fear of reciprocal linking to websites who inadvertently link to a “bad neighborhood” with penalties or PageRank zero, passing on problems to you. Use your common sense. Is this a website you would want to visit or your visitors would want to visit? If the answer is no or you can’t tell what the subject of the site is, make a note of it and keep looking. A website full of links with little content doesn’t “make sense” because what benefit is it to you or your visitors? Of course you are going to link to your partners in business or maybe the small website that is doing a bang up job of selling widgets and providing widget information.
Linking Just To Link
If you are going to link, what purpose does it serve? The idea of acquiring link popularity by linking back and forth to other sites to boost your popularity artificially is a popular method. But is it of value to your website? Ask yourself:
* Would you link to this site if link popularity in the search engines didn’t matter?
* Would your visitor care about this link or find it helpful?
* Does the website have good content?
* Is this an opportunity for you to publicize your website by being listed there?
* Will this link cause you to spend a great deal of time worrying about it?
* Is the link “just a link” or do you want a link from any site whose visitors care about what you have to say
Places To Seek Out Links That Make Sense
It makes sense to list your website in the search engines and directories. In fact, one-way linking, such as listing your site in directories, is a good way to improve your link popularity naturally. Well, you say to yourself, of course I’ve done that. Besides the major directories, what else is out there? You’d be surprised at the amount of good secondary and specialty directories that drive traffic. Some even specialize in a topic – maybe your topic. If you have a product to sell, look at who your competitor is linking to. Search for directories and business sites on your topic. Look for websites that talk about
the widgets you sell and see if they accept submissions to their directory listings in the category for widgets. Do they accept original articles, product reviews, press releases or white papers about widgets? If so, submit your topical articles and watch your link popularity rise naturally. Always include your author bio, website link, reprint and copyright information for your company. With your good content on other websites as well as archived on your own website, there you have it, links pointing back to your website.
Think Like A Search Visitor
You’ve heard about good navigation, website usability and other ways to keep your site visitors interested in your site. Who are the search engines catering to? Webmasters? Search Engine Marketers? Google is a prime example – they want to create the best experience for their search engine users. It all ties in together – good content, good navigation, good usability, validated code, and relevant search engine results – because it makes sense. If Google as the leader in search engines is concerned about the visitor, don’t you think the other search engines following suit?
Hard Work Instead Of Worrying
Focus your time on good content which uses your important keyword phrases. Optimize your web pages using those keywords. Develop your website so once your visitors arrive, they will want to stay. The world wide web uses linking to connect us all. By using hard work to create a quality website and common sense when linking you can stop worrying and start succeeding.
Author Bio:
Daria Goetsch is the founder and Search Engine Marketing Consultant for Search Innovation Marketing (http://www.searchinnovation.com), a Search Engine Promotion company serving small businesses. Besides running her own company, Daria is an associate of WebMama.com, an Internet web marketing strategies company. She has specialized in search engine optimization since 1998, including three years as the Search Engine Specialist for O’Reilly & Associates, a technical book publishing company.
Key Word Optimization Secrets
Judging by the number of websites on the web today, it is becoming harder and harder to find key words for optimization that your competitors are not already using. But finding keywords that your competitors are missing might be easier than imagined. Here we shall have a look at both conventional and unconventional means to overcome the competition in search engine rankings by showing you some effective but often overlooked ways of beating the competition at the SEO race.
Viewing Your Competitors Source Code
This is one of the easiest and most effective ways of learning more about your competition and their SEO strategy. It gives you the opportunity to have a look at some of their keywords, and better still you can get to see what keyword phrases they target in the search engines. Though not as important as they were in the earlier phases of the internet, meta-tags still play a key role in Search Engine Optimization techniques. Create your own keyword phrases by using a combination of some of the keywords targeted in your competitors meta tags. Go through the source code and pay particular attention to headings and titles. The higher up they are in the source code, the easier it will be for search engines to find them and this gives you an edge about where and how to place your keywords on your own page.
Place Yourself In The Search Engine User’s Mindset
Knowing your customers can eliminate a lot of wasted time and effort. If you know the people that you are targeting, you can then be able to customize your efforts to suit them. Think of the terms that you would search for if you were looking for your own site. It is also good to let someone else compile a list of words that they would use to search for your site, two minds are better than one. Search words that may not be obvious to you may be common with a particular group within your targeted clientele. Make sure you focus on the real content on the site, keep the topics in mind when looking for competitive keyword phrases. Even within your targeted group, there are bound to be a few other groups within it. For example, if your site sells second hand blue jeans, there may be people who will look for Edwin’s blue jeans while others may type in Levi’s blue jeans. Knowing these minor details about your customers can improve your site traffic dramatically.
Keyword Tools
Before settling down to the terms that you are going to use for your site optimization, run them through any keyword suggestion tool to see their popularity and any variations that you may have overlooked. Here I would recommend the Overture suggestion tool, it is both free and reliable and thus a perfect fit for an entrepreneur. Use it to edit the list of words and phrases that you prepared for optimization.
Multiple Words And Phrases
Single words are unlikely to bring you any qualified visitors. If you have a site selling homemade butter cookies, having cookies as one of the keywords might generate a million leads but chances are that very few of them are potential customers for your product. Half of them might be computer nerds searching for information about cookies and sessions for all you know. You would be much better off having ‘Homemade Irish Cookies’ or any other descriptive term that will drive specific and qualified customers ready to purchase your
product.
Keyword Variations
As I mentioned in the previous section, optimum results are more likely to be obtained using multiple words than singular words. Adding on to this, it is important that you create as many variations as possible for the selected keywords so that you expand the scope of your reach. For example if you are promoting a site selling second hand magazines, you can have not only ‘second-hand’ but similar words such as ‘Used magazines’, and ‘Last Year’s editions’ and so on that will effectively reach a more far reaching market for you.
For more tips on how to optimize your site and market your effort online, you can access more articles available at http://www.e-gnorance.com.
Author Bio:
Charlz is founder of http://www.e-gnorance.com, a site geared to the provision of information on education and entrepreneurship. Lots of informative content on web marketing, ecommerce and entrepreneurship.
Introduction
For many, the value of their websites can be measured in visitors, for others it is the amount of revenue that the site generates. Regardless of how you measure the success of your website, you are going to have to bring visitors to it that are looking for the information, content and/or products that you are providing. So how do you do this?
For many businesses the yellow pages is a first choice for promotions and marketing. A standard yellow page ad runs for about $1,200+/year for a smaller ad and serves only a local market. You further have to consider the cost of ad development, which can often run into the thousands of dollars as well.
While this may be an essential form of advertising for many businesses which serve only local areas, it is certainly not the only one.
On the Internet there are many forms of advertising that have and are being used to bring traffic to websites. From banner ads and sp@m email to PPC and natural search engines there are countless methods for promoting your website online. So how do you choose which marketing tactic to utilize?
One thing to consider is that over 80% of all Internet traffic comes from search engines with Google currently responsible for the vast majority of that. With such an overwhelming amount of traffic coming from a single identifiable source it makes sense to put a lot of weight on what traffic from this source can mean for your website, and for your business.
In this article we will explore the difference between sites that should consider search engine placement as a viable choice in their marketing strategy, and those that would benefit little from top placements. As well we will look at ways to insure that you are maximizing the effect and potential return on investment of your search engine placement campaign should you choose to go that route.
Who Should Consider Search Engine Placement
An ethical search engine placement firm will tell a client honestly if search engine optimization will benefit their website. Of course, not every company is ethical and further, how do you know until you have undergone search engine optimization, whether it will benefit your website? By this point you have paid the firm and they have done their job whether it helped you or not.
There are a few things you should consider before you apply search engine placement tactics to your website, or consider hiring a search engine placement firm. I include “apply search engine placement tactics to your website” as, even though it may be “free” to do it yourself you can detract from the overall visual appeal of your site if not done correctly, and also it is a very time consuming process to both learn and perform.
Questions You Should Ask Yourself
What do I stand to gain from higher search engine traffic? As search engine optimization has a built in cost of either time and resources should you choose to do it yourself, or through the direct cost of money should you hire a search engine placement firm, you have to insure that what you hope to accomplish will be at least equal to and preferably greater than the cost of time and money it will take to do successfully. For more information on this you will want to read the section below “So You’re Going To Market Your Website On The Search Engines, Now What?” for tips on establishing whether there is truly enough traffic to be had to make your efforts worth it.
Can I compete? The short answer to this question is generally always “yes” however there are many factors to consider. While any site, with enough work, can rank well you do have to consider whether the effort will be worth it. For example, if you own a small computer store in Michigan that repairs computers and troubleshoots software issues, it is theoretically possible for you to rank your website well for the term “Microsoft Windows”. To do so would require an ENORMOUS amount of both time and money. And so you have to consider, is it really worth investing years of time and money into this one ranking? The answer is “probably not” but that doesn’t mean that search engine placement would not be beneficial for you, just that those keywords are not worth targeting. There are suggestions for choosing the right keywords below.
Do I make money from my website traffic? This question isn’t the end-all-be-all however it’s certainly relevant if you’re considering hiring a search engine placement firm to optimize your site. If you plan on “going it alone” you may want to put in the effort for no money in return simply for the “fun” of it, however if you’re planning on spending your hard earned money on a search engine placement firm you have to make sure that it is in your economic best interest to do so. This may be from either direct product/services sales or from the sale of advertising on your site.
If, after answering these questions to yourself you have determined that search engine placement is indeed a good choice for your marketing strategy you will now have the task of determining exactly what tactics will produce the greatest Return On Investment for your efforts.
So You’re Going To Market Your Website On The Search Engines � Now What?
Now that you have determined that search engine placement is indeed an avenue of marketing that can produce beneficial results for your site and for your business, you have to decide on a “plan of attack”. Many SEO firms will “help” you determine keywords to target, and some will even build links for you from “valuable” sites. In many case they may be entirely truthful but how do you know?
The choosing of the keywords to target is probably the most crucial step of the entire search engine optimization process. This will determine the success and/or failure of your promotions. Even if you attain all the top placements that were targeted, if you target the wrong terms these rankings will produce little or no results. So how do you determine for yourself which keywords to target?
Without getting into anything too technical there are a couple of great resources out there to help you isolate the keywords that you should target.
The Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool
Advantages – The Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool is free and produces a large number of results for related searches. Disadvantages – There are two main disadvantages to the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool in determining your keywords. The first of these is that it puts everything in terms on the singular and further will correct misspellings where you may want to know how many people searched for a misspelled term. If you run a shopping site that sells gifts you will not be able to determine whether the main searched phrase was “gift” or “gifts”. The second major disadvantage to the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool is that it doesn’t give you alternative search phrases that are related but that you might not have thought to punch in (“presents” for example). Which brings us to the second tool.
WordTracker
Advantages – WordTracker addresses all the disadvantages noted about the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool. It differentiates between singular and plural and will allow you to search for misspellings. Further, it searches a thesaurus and will make a number of suggestions for other terms you may not have thought of but which may be related to your industry. It will then analyze the variety of terms that you have searched and chosen and actually make recommendations on which keywords to target based on the number of competing pages and the specific search engine you are targeting. It will also give you a predicted number of searches per day for each phrase.
Disadvantages – The only real disadvantage to WordTracker is that it has a cost. There is a free trial on the site which you can use though the results it produces are far lower in numbers and it does not give you information on all of the major search engines. Certainly worth checking into even if you only try the demo mode (not a download – this is an online resource).
So You Now Have A List Of Possible Keyword Phrases � Now What?
The next step is to determine whether you can compete with those currently holding the top positions and, more importantly, whether it will be economical to do so. The first place to look when you are trying to determine this is the search engines themselves. Let’s assume for a second that you have determined that there are a good number of searches for your product and that the main keyword phrase you would like to target is “acne cures”. The next step is to run a search for “acne cures”. Most people are interested primarily in their Google rankings and so you would run that search on Google producing the following results:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=acne+cures.
The site currently holding the #4 position is www.approvedcures.com. Take a look at the site. There are two major things that you will first be looking for:
Is this a large site with a lot of content related to the search phrase? In this case the answer is “yes”. They have a very large site and all of it is related to the topic the search was for.
How many incoming links do they have? You will now want to find out what sort of link popularity you will be competing with. Links are not the end-all-be-all of search engine optimization, if fact it is just one of a large number of deciding factors, however the links help determine your Google PageRank and this PageRank is a final multiplier in determining your position. Because the number of incoming links is easily determined it is something you should look into. To determine the number of links simply enter into the Google search bar “link:www.domain-in-question.com”. In this case it would be http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&c2coff=1&q=link%3Awww.approvedcures.com. They do not have a large number of incoming links and thus, this is not going to be a significant factor in determining their ranking.
And Now You’re Ready For Search Engine Placement
At this point you should have a pretty good idea as to whether search engine placement is a viable choice for your website promotions, which keywords you should target, and what competition you will be facing.
Assuming that your website needs to be optimized, you will now be faced with the choice of doing it yourself or hiring a search engine placement firm.
If you will be doing your own optimization I would highly recommend reading an article by the CEO of StepForth Search Engine Placement entitled “A 10 Minute Search Engine Optimization”. It can be found on the StepForth website at http://news.stepforth.com/2003-news/ten-minute-optimization.shtml.
If you will be hiring on a search engine placement firm I would recommend first submitting your site for a free website review off of our homepage at http://www.stepforth.com. There is no obligation and it will give you a very good idea of what areas need to be addressed.
Author Bio:
Dave Davies is the marketing manager for StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc. Visit them online at http://www.stepforth.com or email him at dave@stepforth.com.
Search Engine Optimization Basics
This is the latest article in the “Back to Basics” series. Previous articles Impact include the importance of search engine marketing (SEM), effective keyword research, title tag formats, Meta tag use, as well as submissions. In this topic, we take a look at changes you can make to the content of your site to further improve search engine positioning.
Over the past few months, search engine optimization (SEO) has become more mainstream, with many companies considering this form of marketing for the first time. The amount of information on the topic of SEO has increased dramatically, with many new authors stepping forward to pen guides that explain how to optimize a website. Yet even with this increased awareness, it still amazes me the number of business owners that still believe tweaking titles or adding keywords to Meta tags is all that is needed to increase search engine visibility.
Optimizing Your Page Content
In previous articles, I have endeavored to provide a beginner’s guide to making these changes; now it’s time to turn our attention to perhaps one of the most important aspects of any SEO campaign, optimizing your page content. The only problem with this topic is, where do I start? There are so many changes that can be made to a web page’s content that I could easily fill ten articles on the subject, so you can see my dilemma in trying to condense my advice into just one single piece. But that is what we shall do; after all, this is a ‘Back to Basics’ series.
So, where do we start? What is the most important change a Webmaster can make to a page in order to improve search engine positioning? To find the answer, we simply go back to the very first article in this series, where we discussed effective keyword research. When researching your industry, competitors and most requested search terms, you identified the keywords that are the most regularly used by your target audience. You’ve used them in your title and Meta tags, but their most important use is on the actual page content, the text you display on the pages you are trying to get positioned.
Include Your Targeted Search Terms
So many times, I have seen web sites that fail to mention any of the search terms they are trying to achieve rankings for. They’ll have lots of graphics and may also have good levels of text on the page, yet the company still fails to include the exact phrase that is important to them. For example, if you’re trying to achieve rankings for the term ‘desktop computer supplies,’ make sure your content has that exact phrase present in it. It is of little benefit to say something along the lines of, ‘The best selection of accessories for your home computer’ when trying to target ‘desktop computer supplies.’ While you may pick up points for having text that is on the same theme, you won’t achieve your best search engine rankings unless you include liberal occurrences of the exact phrase you are trying to target.
Checking Keyword Density
Your next question is likely to be ‘How often should I mention each search term?’ A well- optimized page should include at least 250 words of text. Within that text, aim to achieve between 5-15% frequency for the term you are trying to target. Not sure how to calculate search term frequency? Check out www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/kwda.cgi, a great little tool that will show you the keyword density of each one, two and three-word phrases on any page within your web site. Make sure that you place your most important search terms in text located towards the top of your page and also try not to target more than 5 phrases within any block of text (the more phrases you try to target, the more text you need to achieve a high frequency).
Also look for opportunities to make links out of search terms located within your page text. In the example of ‘desktop computer supplies,’ consider making one of the occurrences of this phrase a hyperlink to the most relevant page within your website; it will give you a little push in your ranking efforts.
The Impact Of Keyword Proximity
If you’re unable to include the exact phrase within your page text, which can often happen when the targeted search term is not used in the course of normal syntax, try at least to keep the words within close proximity. For example, you could use ‘Discounted supplies for desktop computers.’ While it is not as valuable as including the exact phrase, it at least contains the targeted words, albeit in a different order. The search engines, while preferring to display pages that match search terms exactly, have shown propensity to display web pages that have the targeted words within close proximity, if not the exact order they were searched.
Search Terms Should Be Pervasive
While the paragraphs of text within your web page offer the best opportunity to include search terms, make sure you don’t miss the many other opportunities scattered among your content. For example, look at the text contained within the headings of each page and make sure they contain the most relevant search term for your content. Also, consider the navigation menu that you use and look for instances where you can include a relevant search term. How about the text you use under each product description? I’ve seen websites where the most dominant two-word phrase on a product page was ‘Sale Price.’ Ouch!
As you can see, the text you use on each page is vitally important when trying to achieve better search engine positioning. However, adding keywords to your content is not enough to get your web site to the coveted ‘#1’ position. There are many other factors that need to be considered, including many that don’t involve the content on the page, but as we are looking at the page content, here are a few quick tips:
‘ Don’t bury your keyword-rich content at the bottom of the page. The search engines consider where the text is located on a page when determining your site’s relevancy. Google will believe that text pushed to the bottom of your site, in a small font, can’t be that relevant to your business.
‘ Don’t overdo things. While having no search terms in your text is disastrous, having too many could have an equally negative impact. Stick to your 5-15% frequency.
‘ Remember the user experience. While your SEO efforts will help improve your search engine rankings, don’t sacrifice the usability of your web site. Ensure that it is easy to navigate and that all of your keyword-rich text still makes sense to the average visitor.
‘ Add one or two targeted search terms to the ALT tags of any image that links to another page within your website. Search engines have shown they consider ALT tag text when the image contains a link to another page.
‘ Don’t go overboard with the use of ‘H1’ tags or bolded text. While they can help improve your search engine positioning, less is more.
Walk Before You Run
Hopefully, the above advice will assist you in modifying your most important pages to increase search engine visibility. When you feel you have made all the basic changes to the text of your site, you’ll find many articles that discuss fine-tuning your page layout and content. Search engine optimization is a continued process and you’ll no doubt drive yourself crazy if you try to optimize every single aspect of your web site. Simply remember to keep your site relevant and make sure you have covered all the basics before advancing to more complex techniques.
Author Bio:
Andy Beal is Vice President of Search Marketing for WebSourced, Inc and KeywordRanking.com, global leaders in professional search engine marketing. Highly respected as a source of search engine marketing advice, Andy has had articles published around the world and is a repeat speaker at Danny Sullivan’s Search Engine Strategies conferences. Clients include Real.com, Alaska Air, Peopleclick, Monica Lewinsky and NBC. You can reach Andy at andy@keywordranking.com and view his daily SEO blog at www.searchenginelowdown.com.
Domain Name Dilemma
It’s a fact. When it comes to Google ranking you don’t have to be a lot better to beat out the competition. So let’s take another dip into the “every little bit helps” pool.
Now believe it or not there are those who like to debate the merits of using dashes or underscores in domain names. Some assert dashes are better. Some have an ongoing love affair with underscores. Others are certain there is no difference.
I agree you do get a bit of a bounce in Google if you do this right. But it’s only marginal. Still let’s end this debate once and for all and PROVE which is better. To sort this out we need to conduct a study. Using the Google search results to test if Google treats dashes or underscores the same or differently. The guinea pig search term I picked is “affordable search engine placement”. There’s nothing special about it. It’s more or less your run-of-the-mill multi-word search term. So let’s get searching.
First, to set a benchmark I cast the broadest net possible by doing a simple search using
affordable search engine placement
Google returned these results:
Searched the web for affordable search engine placement.
Results 1 – 10 of about 78,600
That simply says there were 78,600 pages indexed by Google for ANY of those keywords.
Next I searched on the same phrase only this time I separated the words by dashes like this:
affordable-search-engine-placement
Google turned up these results:
Searched the web for affordable-search-engine-placement.
Results 1 – 10 of about 1,160.
As you can see our term with dashes gave considerably fewer results than the one without.
Then I searched on the same words separated by underscores:
affordable_search_engine_placement
For this one Google didn’t find much:
Searched the web for affordable_search_engine_placement.
Results 1 – 4 of about 6.
Whoa! Next to no pages with underscores, right?
Finally I searched for
“affordable search engine placement”
Note the quotes. Using quotes limits the search results to one specific phrase. Just like you were doing an advanced search for that exact phrase.
In this case Google returned these results:
Searched the web for “affordable search engine placement”.
Results 1 – 10 of about 1,160.
Huh, exactly the same number of pages as with the keyword phrase with dashes. Okay so what do we got?
Let’s see. The first search returns what you could say is a free for all of listings with any of the words in the keyword phrase. That’s why there are so many search results.
SIDEBAR: Reality check time. This is how most search. In fact I saw a stat the said only 3% use the advanced search feature provided by Google. Yet the dramatically bigger number of resulting SERPS explains why it is harder to rank high sometimes. Reason being you are going up against a whole bunch more pages – some unrelated to what is being searched for. So it’s takes more juice, ie on-page optimization, internal links and maybe even in bound links to come out on top.
Now our study also showed the phrase with underscores (which Google treats as any other CHARACTER) produced negligible results. As in next to none. While the keyword phrase with dashes and the exact phrase search turned up the same number of listings. At this point you should be wondering “Why is that?” Glad you asked. Even if you didn’t let me explain. Oh and since this is important engage your brain NOW.
The reason for this apparent match of search results is Google uses the dash to separate the words in the phrase. Programmers call this a “delimiter”. In essence Google sees it as a space or separator between the words. Or in other words Google treats the dash as a spacer. Yet Google does NOT treat the underscore as a delimiter. Again to Google it’s just another character.
Which is proven by the search results. Had Google treated the dash and underscore alike the number of SERPs returned for
affordable_search_engine_placement
or
affordable-search-engine-placement
would be identical. But as you saw they are not. Not even close.
So to answer the original question of which is better dashes or underscores is obvious isn’t it? You want to go with dashes in your domain names, folder names, files names etc. That’s because using dashes to separate the words will give you the biggest Google impact -whatever that impact may be. Since Google can parse the different words. While using underscores won’t help one iota.
Look. This isn’t theory or speculation. It’s fact. And you can repeat the same searches with any keyword phrase you want and you’ll get the same results. In any case let’s be real. Don’t expect some kind of massive boost from this dash trick. Sure it can help at tad as part of an over all optimization scheme. But whether or not you use dashes in a domain, folder or file name is not going to be whatgets you top Google listings. Content and links are.
Still this study settles the debate about dashes and underscores. Giving you yet another little thing you can do to rank well.
Author Bio:
How much is more traffic worth to your business? Take John Gergye’s Search Engine Quiz and get a special report “Coming Out On Top” with 49 tools that make it easy to get more traffic. http://www.traffic-test-tube.com/search-engine-quiz.shtml
Keyword Ownership
Have you ever got one of those silly emails that offers to let you own a keyword? Silly question. How many such emails do you get every day?
A number of such services regularly email me offering keyword ownership of premium keywords for $300/year. They say that anyone can type the keyword I bought in the address bar of Internet explorer, instead of typing in a URL, and they will be sent directly to my site. In total it seems that there are about 2% of Internet users worldwide who have enabled one type or another of this system, spread out between a few competitive services.
Data shows that between 4% and 7% of search queries are performed by entering something in the address bar. By default for IE users, these searches are automatically routed through to MSN search. Many of us however have installed so much software over time, and unknowingly, some of this software has re-routed these search queries to other search portals, such as iGetNet, or others. This often happens if you’ve installed any file sharing software. We have all heard & read about how many extra ‘features’ come with programs like Kazaa. This means that your default search from the address bar may no longer be MSN, and may have been rerouted elsewhere, but the basic principle still applies. Of the queries that are actually run from an address bar, at least half of them are unintentionally instigated by people mistyping the desired URL. This means that between 2% and 4% of Internet users actually search via their address bar.
So how exactly do these address bars work? There are many of these companies offering this kind of service, with each one of them selling the very same keywords to different and sometimes competing companies. To make things worse, the keywords you might buy will only work with the issuing company’s proprietary address bar plug-in. Then, to actually offer search capabilities from the address bar, each of these service providers needs to get individual Internet users to download and install their plug-in, and remember to run searches from the address bar.
How effective can a marketing strategy of this nature be when the various tools are not interchangeable, there are numerous competitors selling the same key words to different companies, and you are targeting only a small fraction of Internet users? If your ad is being displayed because it’s similar to the search query, are you paying for irrelevant results? This can happen. If there is not a perfect match to a search query, the next closest match may be displayed.
Competing with these companies is any search engine that offers its own toolbar. You can download a toolbar from any number of engines, and run searches on any key word or phrase quickly and easily. You then get the search engines selection of closest matches, from all the web sites they have indexed. They offer more than just one choice, and don’t cost anything.
Who Started This?
Started in 1998, Realnames was the first company that tied searching via the address bar to a web browser. At the time, it was touted as a value added solution for businesses around the world who were attempting to get their products found quickly, but didn’t want customers to have to wade through a sea of Web addresses to reach their destination.
In part, it was deemed necessary because so few web site operators were search engine savvy, and fewer still knew anything about search engine optimization and promotion. What the Realnames solution did was allow a web site operator to buy a keyword, and then when any user of Internet Explorer would type that keyword into the IE address toolbar, they would get directed to the web site that owned the keyword.
The company hoped to profit from businesses which wanted to reach Internet users who would type keywords into their browsers address bar instead of remembering the URL, or going through a standard search interface.
Unfortunately for the company, the service was entirely dependent on Microsoft; and when Microsoft stopped supporting the technology in May 2002, the company was forced to close. The reason it was so totally dependent was simple. Unlike the new companies on the market today, Realnames did not depend on an end user downloading and installing a plugin, instead it was essentially integrated into Internet Explorer by Microsoft. Therefore everyone who used IE automatically had the plugin.
The Legal Question
Each of the companies offering these services has a policy designed to ensure that a web site only buys keywords related to their content, and their review process is designed to keep cybersquatters from hijacking popular names and products. Unfortunately, there is no way to guarantee that any one of these keyword ownership services adheres to any naming standard, or even ensures that any purchaser has the legal right to any of the terms they are buying. This means that the rights to copyrighted material like “Pepsi” or generic words like “business” could end up in the hands of the first buyer. While Pepsi is a well known brand name, there are millions of copyrighted and trademark protected terms, covered in multiple jurisdictions. It would not be cost effective or practical for these services to police copyright and trademark infringement.
In the summer of 1999, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, denied Playboy’s request for an injunction barring a search engine from selling advertising based on the terms playboy and playmate. In the precedent setting ruling regarding keyword advertising, Judge Stotler of the United States District Court in Santa, Ana, California, dismissed a lawsuit brought by Playboy Enterprises against the search engine Excite, Inc. and Netscape. The ruling limited the online rights of trademark holders, as it recognized that a trademark may be used without authorization by search engines in advertising sales practices.
Playboy claimed that the search engines were displaying paid banner ads from pornographic web sites whenever “playboy” or “playmate” were used as a search term. As the owner of the trademarks for both terms, Playboy argued that the use of its trademarks for a third party sales scheme was trademark infringement and branding dilution.
In the ruling dismissing Playboy’s case, the Judge found that Excite had not used the trademarks “playboy” and “playmate” in an unlawful manner. This was because Excite had not used the trademarked words to identify Excites own goods or services and therefore trademark infringement laws did not apply. It was further determined that even if there was trademark usage, there was no infringement because there was no evidence that consumers confused Playboy products with the services of Excite or Netscape.
What About Within Meta Tags?
Is it illegal to use trademarked terms in your Meta tags? Sometimes. The problem occurs with how and why you are using the terms. Web sites that use the tags in a deceptive manner have lost legal battles. However, legitimate reasons to use the terms have resulted in successful defenses.
In a case involving Playboy, the firm was able to prove trademark infringement, based on use of their trademark in Meta tags, URL and content on the web site. The case was filed by the firm against web site operators for stuffing their web pages with the words Playboy and Playmate hundreds of times. Furthermore, the defendants were also using the terms Playboy and Playmate in the site names, URLs, and slogans. In this case the Judge ruled for Playboy, as there was a clear case of trademark infringement.
In the separate case, Playboy vs. Terri Welles, the court refused Playboy’s request. The reason was simple. Terri Welles was Playboy’s 1981 Playmate of the Year. She had used the terms “Playmate” and “Playboy” on her web pages and within her Meta tags, and the Court felt she had a legitimate right to use them to accurately describe herself, and to ensure that the search engines could catalog her web site properly within their databases. Playboy’s appeal was dismissed on Feb. 1, 2002.
In Summary
It is clear that if you have a legitimate reason to use a trademarked word or phrase in your web site you can. You may also rent their ownership from one of the keyword ownership companies. Be careful, though, it is possible that may get sued.
Does the technology work? Yes, but only for some of the approximately 3% of Internet users worldwide who have installed any one of a variety of competing plugins that enable this type of searching. I stress a fraction of the 3%, as you would need to buy the keywords from each individual vendor to ensure reaching all 2%.
Author Bio:
Richard Zwicky is a founder and the CEO of Metamend Software, a Victoria, B.C. based firm whose cutting edge Search Engine Optimization software has been recognized around the world as a leader in its field. Employing a staff of 10, the firm’s business comes from around the world, with clients from every continent. Most recently the company was recognized for their geo-locational, or GIS technology, which correlates online businesses with their physical locations, as well as their cutting edge advances in contextual search algorithms.
New Legal Guidelines
The marketing environment online has been changing over time to reflect new needs and to remove new problems. E-mail may no longer be the “killer app” it was, what with the evolving changes taking place.
With ISPs filtering email at ever-increasing rates as consumers complain about the volumes of junk e-mail (SPAM or UCE) they’re receiving; with spammers getting more and more aggressive (and ingenious) with their tactics; and with consumers continually complaining to politicians to “do something about it;” life for the newsletter publisher is no longer simple.
It used to be that accepting signups and sending your newsletter was the EASY part � putting it together and getting subscribers to find you was the hard part. Not any more.
Now you have to deal with a myriad of laws � laws which may or may not apply to you, which vary by location, and laws which you may be completely unaware of.
Many states in the United States have laws which prohibit certain types of email marketing. These are usually based on how the email address is acquired and what the contents of the email actually are. California, of the states in the Union, has the most stringent laws.
In addition to this, many member countries of the European Union have passed or are in the process of passing similar legislation against unsolicited commercial email.
“How does this affect me?” The newsletter publisher asks. Well, the way these laws are written, you could be in violation even if your entire list of subscribers are opt-ins. How?
Since California’s law is the most stringent and since estimates say that 20% of Internet traffic around the world originates, passes through, or is served from that state, we’ll look at the law there. Most laws in other places are not as strict, but many countries in the EU are working on laws that will be similar. Plus California is commonly known as a “test zone” for laws in the United States.
The law defines an “unsolicited commercial email advertisement” as being any email sent without the “direct consent” of or without a “preexisting or current business relationship” with the receiver. Interestingly, the receiver doesn’t have to be a California resident because the law states that if the email originates or has been sent “within, from and to” the state of California, it is covered. So if your server is located in California and you send email through it that someone doesn’t like, you could be subject to the law � even if you’re a resident of New York and the receiver is in Washington!
The other crux of this law is the definition of “direct consent.” It is defined as “�the recipient has expressly consented to receive e-mail advertisements from the advertiser, either in response to a clear and conspicuous request for the consent or at the recipient’s own initiative.”
The penalties for violating this law are immense: $1,000 for each offending e-mail and up to $1,000,000 per incident, plus actual damages and attorney’s fees.
The up-side to all of this is that the law, as written, is full of holes. There are a myriad of ways to get around trouble with it, but there is definitely an increased risk to email marketers. After all, a new law means that it’s easier for those with complaints to force legal action, which means your chance of ending up in court is higher than it was before.
My personal opinion is that as soon as this law is used (it goes into effect on January 1, 2004 in California), it will be challenged Constitutionally and probably fail to hold up because of the ambiguous wording of much of the legislation.
It is still a good idea, however, for the e-zine publisher to make sure their email collection techniques are on the up-and-up: double- opt-in if possible, collect names as well as emails, provide VERY easy unsubscribe options (links in every email are the best), and don’t abuse your list.
Most of us are following good guidelines and have nothing much to worry about. Just make sure you aren’t setting yourself up for anything.
Author Bio:
Aaron Turpen is the proprietor of Aaronz WebWorkz, a full-service online company catering to small and home-based businesses. Aaronz WebWorkz offers a wide variety of services including Web development, newsletter publishing, consultation, and more.
Why Isn’t My Website In The Search Engines?
If your site isn’t found in the search engines, it is probably because the robots couldn’t deal with it. It could be something as simple as not being able to find the site, or it may be more complicated issues involving the robot’s not being able to crawl the site or figure out what your pages are all about.
Submitting your site to the major search engines: that will help deal with the “can’t find it” problem. Even having links pointing back to your site can be enough to attract the search engine robots. Google, for example, suggests that you may not have to submit your pages; they will find your site if you have a link pointing back to it from at least one other site on the web.
If the robots can find your site but can’t make sense of it, then you may need to look at the content and technology used on your pages. Frames, Flash, dynamically generated pages, and invalid HTML source code can cause problems when the search engine robot tries to access your web pages. While some search engines are beginning to be able to index dynamically enerated pages and Flash (e.g. Google and AllTheWeb), use of some of these technologies can hinder your ability to be indexed by the search engine robots.
Text in images cannot be read by the search engine robots. Using ALT image text is an important way to help the robots “read” your images. Websites with extensive images rely heavily on ALT text to present their content.
How Do I Get The Most Out Of Indexing?
If you know what to “feed” the spidering robots you will help yourself with search engine ranking.
Having a website full of good content is the major factor. Search engines exist to serve their visitors, not to rank your website. You need to be sure to present yourself in your site in the way that will be most useful to the search engine visitor. Each search engine has its own idea of what is important in a page, but they all value text highly. Making sure that the text on your pages includes your most important keyword phrases will help the search engine evaluate the content of those pages.
Making sure that you have good title and meta tags will further assist the search engines in understanding what your page is about. If the text on the page is about widgets, the title is about widgets, and the meta tags are about widgets, the search engine will have a pretty good idea that you are all about widgets. When their visitors search for widgets, the search engines know to list your site in the results.
A sitemap page is a very good way of giving the search engine robot every opportunity to reach your website pages. Since robots click through the links of your web pages, make sure that at least your most important pages are included in the sitemap; you may even want to include all your pages there, depending on the size of your site. Be sure to add a link to the sitemap page from each page on your site.
Another important consideration is that of keeping all of your pages within a small number of “clicks” from your top page. Many robots will not follow links more than two or three levels deep, so if your “widgets” page can only be reached from your home page by following multiple links (e.g. home page >> about us page >> products page >> widgets page), the robot may not crawl deep enough to get to the widgets page.
Testing Your Website For Search Engine Robot Accessibility To get an idea just what the search engine robot “sees” on your page, you can look at the Sim Spider tool. You may be surprised at how different your site looks to the robot. You can find this tool at http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/sim_spider.cgi
You will see text and ALT image text show up in the results. If your entire website is built in Flash, you will see nothing at all because robots don’t understand Flash movies.
The Bottom Line
When it comes to search engine robots, think simply. Lots of good content and text, hyperlinks the robots can follow, optimization of your pages, topical links pointing back to your site and a sitemap will help insure the best results when the robots come visiting.
Resources
SpiderSpotting – Search Engine Watch
Robotstxt.org
Protocols for setting up a robots.txt file.
Spider-Food
Tutorials, forums and articles about Search Engine spiders and Search Engine Marketing.
SpiderHunter.com
Articles and resources about tracking Search Engine spiders.
Sims Search Engine Simulator
Search Engine World has a spider that simulates what the Search Engine robots read from your website.
Author Bio:
Daria Goetsch is the founder and Search Engine Marketing Consultant for Search Innovation Marketing (http://www.searchinnovation.com), a Search Engine Promotion company serving small businesses. Besides running her own company, Daria is an associate of WebMama.com, an Internet web marketing strategies company. She has specialized in search engine optimization since 1998, including three years as the Search Engine Specialist for O’Reilly & Associates, a technical book publishing company.
