Sunday, December 30, 2007

Where will you rank this time next year?

Now is the time to decide where you want to be at this time next year. If you want to rank in the top ten then you need to decide that here and now. Once you have made up your mind then you just need to go through the process of link building on a regular basis until you are where you need to be.

Now is the time for you to choose to succeed. If you do nothing then this time next year I can tell you where you will rank. But....... if you take positive action and commit yourself to a proactive link creation program then in a years time your site will have more visitors, you will have more customers and that is what it is ultimately all about.

Happy new year to you all

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Who should you avoid linking with?

In some ways it is more important which sites you avoid linking with rather than the ones that you actually link with. This is due to the way that Google measures and values each link.

The good news is that Google understands that it is not possible to control every site that links to you, but it does follow patterns closely so if you have undesirable links in any numbers you will be penalised.

So what is an undesirable link? In simple terms a bad link is any link that Google has banned from its listings, in addition certain sites are held in lower esteem than others. These include some if not all gambling sites, most porn sites, warez sites, some free for alls etc.

The moral of the story is to seek out quality links that google values. In addition each of these pages that you add a link to should hopefully contain content similar in subject to your primary link text. That will give your link more relevance improving its value.

In answer to who to avoid, the answer is to avoid any low value sites that Google doesn't value.

For more information visit Deeho Limited

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Who should you link with??????

This is an often misunderstood point, but a very important one.

When you set out looking for links it is best to start with your final goal in mind, namely to get into the top ten in Google for your chosen keywords. To do this you need to get lots of links back to your site that Google values as highly as possible. From this we can deduce that getting links on sites that Google doesn't know about will be far less useful to us. It will still help with some of the lesser SE's ....... maybe, but you will spend time for little return.

So you know that you need to get your links onto sites that Google knows about, and preferably ranks well. You can check if they rank well by adding a Google tool bar to your browser. The toolbar will show you the Page Rank as you view each page so you will know that the site will be useful to your link building campaign.

The Page Rank of individual pages can also be useful, but is not vital. Many people get insistent that their link goes on a high PR page within your site, but it is not as important as you might believe. The PR of the sites index page is the most important point to consider.

If you get your links onto sites that Google knows about, which have less than 100 links per page and use your keywords as your link text then eventually you will rank well for those keywords..... simple as that.

The only advantage to specific page PR is that at least you know that the page is spidered and that providing your link is in the top 100 links then the link will count in your favour. If the page has no PR then it may be because it is a new page and needs some time to become established. The point is this, it is easier to get links from people who are starting our with their link building campaigns. You may lack Page Rank initially, and some of the links that you post may even not rank at all, but as the sites improve their page rank and flourish your link will be carried upwards with it. Your links posted today could be on PR 7 and PR 8 sites in a couple of years time, so go for it.

Happy linking

Thursday, December 13, 2007

How many links do you need?

This is a great question, and one that is not as straight forward as you might think. Initially the first port of call when looking to rank for a term is to have a look at the to 5 sites. Copy their url into http://uk.siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/siteexplorer and you will get a good idea of the size of the site and how many backlinks it has.

While this is a guide, it is very rough guess as often those links might be of very low quality, or be coming from the host site itself!

The level of detail analysis depends upon how much you are willing to invest. SEO is a cart before the horse industry, whereby you need to invest long before you see any return on your investment. The more indepth your analytics, the more accurately you can foretell when your site will reach the top.

It is possible to look at each link in turn and establish its worth, the site pr, the page pr, the page title, headings, link text etc and from this data it is possible to establish a strategy to outdo the top sites and rank there yourself.

If you concentrate on getting high quality links to your site then you will succeed, all you have to do is keep on keeping on.



Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Content is King

No matter what rankings you are trying to achieve, it all boils down to the same fundamentals in the end. Content is the answer to many seo problems, and only fresh, original content will boost your rank in the long term.

New pages with focused topics and themes are very popular with the SE's. They like to see a page dedicated to one subject, it makes the page in question into a valuable resource that others might like to read. The is what the SE's are trying to provide for their searchers, it is your job to provide it to them.

Of course the page will need to be tweaked in the right places so that the SE's know exactly what it is that they are looking at, but in essence it all comes down to one thing and one thing only...............CONTENT

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

SEO Strategies

With the end of 2007 looming, its time to think about next years seo strategy. To take stock of achievements to date and to decide what we want and need to achieve in 2008.

Now is the time to think about where you want to be in 12 months time, so efficient planning is vital.

Through effective keyword research it is possible to pinpoint where the major traffic for your business type is currently. From there you can fine tune your website so that it ranks for the terms with the best traffic.

Of course the minor hiccup with this is that the keywords with the most traffic are the hardest to rank for..... which is why SEO's like me exist. If you are chasing high traffic search terms then you need to be not only very well informed, but doggedly determined, persistant, ruthless and thorough. Most business people have their own business to run and so don't have the resources to find out enough about optimization in order to achieve success.

By comparison with traditional advertising seo can be very cost effective.

We believe here at Deeho that SEO should work in harmony with your website, to find out more contact us.

Thursday, December 06, 2007

Paid Links

Recently there has been much said about the evils of paid links. It is obvious the in an ideal world Google would only want to see links that had been created by someone who was doing nothing more than recommending site x to his own visitors.

That is all well and good, but this isn't an ideal world. There have been many sites penalised for buying links and yet one of the biggest seo companies in the UK pays for links on a forum that contains comments from Matt Cutts himself.

Currently the whole situation is not clear and innocent sites are being penalised unjustly. When is a paid link a paid link precisely? Banner ads are routinely bought, so are they paid links?

At the minute the jury is out, just don't say that you haven't been warned.


Wednesday, December 05, 2007

The Power of a Good URL

The name of your website doesn't have to be the same as your URL. Most business owners just buy www.fredhinnsltd.co.uk and expect their Widget business to take off. However, the URL www.widget.com will do far more good as far as search traffic goes. you can even brand the site as fredhinnsltd so everyone is happy. The simple fact of having your major keyword in your URL, combined with having a .com (the most powerful in Googles eyes)will improve your search engine ranking no end.

Always start off with a searchable URL and move forward from there.


Monday, December 03, 2007

Hosting and SEO part 2

Frm the perspective of SEO it is far better to have your sites on as many different servers as possible. If you are a web designer or SEO company, then the advantages by far out weigh the drawbacks.

In addition to the benefits of linking from sites that are hosted on different servers, an additional bonus ids that once your sites are ranking well you can also sell advertising space to the same advertiser on different servers. Commonly the larger advertisers will not place adverts or banners on two sites on the same server. This is because the link value is diminished greatly. If you have multiple sites and have plans to optimize them then different servers offer far more advantages and significant revenue streams than hosting on a single server.

The small inconvenience of multiple hosting soon becomes inconsequential when each site can earn hundreds or in time thousands of Pounds annually.

Sunday, December 02, 2007

Hosting and SEO

There is a fine balance between getting SEO right and getting it wrong.

Imagine that you are an seo company, who design and host. You have 20 sites that you host and optimize so naturally you host them in one location, on one server don't you?....... from an initial cost basis this seems like the ideal solution, reduced hosting costs, ease of management etc.

The problem with doing this however is when you start to think about the seo implications. Google know that websites on the same server are likely to know each other, and as such it greatly devalues links between two sites on one server. This can explain why a link from a high quality site that you know you have doesn't show very highly in your link stats. This is because by coinsidence you happen to have chosen the same host company. Fasthosts are the Market leaders at least in the UK, and rent out huge lumps of server space to many other companies from whom you rent it. It is much more common than you think.

Tomorrow I will discuss the topic further

Monday, November 26, 2007

How to get your website spidered by Google

The easiest way to get your website spidered quickly is to Blog ping it.

All this involves is to mention the url in your blog, then ping your blog and within a day or two then your site will magically be visited by the Google spiders.

The other method is to get a PR7 site to link to your on their home page, but lets face it..... that is not an easy task!


Sunday, November 25, 2007

Advanced linking strategies

Once your site is ranking well for your main keywords it is time to start thinking about promoting pages within your site. . . . . . what is known as Deep Linking.

If you optimize inner pages for other keywords or phrases then by linking directly to that page using the keywords as link text will promote that precise page for that keyword within Google and the other major SE's.

This process can be repeated as many times as required, all it takes is for you to add links on a monthly basis until the page ranks where you want it to.

Saturday, November 24, 2007

Creating a Sitemap

It is vital to have a properly created xml sitemap for your website. This xml file is hosted in the root folder of your site and is used to inform Google what pages exist on your site and how important you consider them, and when they have been updated.

Free software exists to create an xml sitemap, the best of these is

http://gsitecrawler.com/ which guides you through the process.

The software will scan your site and find everypage that exists by following every link within your site. This has the added function of showing up and code errors, bad links etc.

Once you have created your sitemap, you can upload it in the format /sitemap.xml then you will need to go to Google Webmaster tools http://www.google.co.uk/webmasters/ and register your site and sitemap. You also get the chance to verify your website with Google by adding a metatag. This authenticates your access/ownership of the site.

Whenever you make new pages for your site, or add content you should recreate your xml sitemap and get Google to reread it. This will ensure that Google doesn't find your pages by chance, but knows exactly what to look for & where to find it.

The submission process needs to be duplicated with Yahoo also who have a similar process

https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/

This is the fastest way to get your site spidered, and will ensure that you keep the major SE's informed of your latest content and updates.


Friday, November 23, 2007

How Important is page rank?

Google issues every site that it considers to be worthy with a Page Rank (PR) score from 0 - 10

PR can be checked here: http://www.commercetuned.co.uk/pr-checker/

There are zero's and zero's however, as a site may be new and so not have a ranking yet in which event it will have an empty white PR display. Alternatively if the white display bar is grey it may well mean that the site has been "sandboxed" or banned from Google completely.

Beyond that there is a sliding scale from 1 to 10, there are approxiamately 30 PR10 sites worldwide, and even Google.co.uk is only a PR9 !! The size and scale of PR 8, 9 and 10 sites prohibits membership for all but the most dedicated of us. But all is not lost, Google rewards success and the more it rewards you the more successfull you will become. Once you have added enough high quality content, and seen to it that you have thousands of high quality backlinks to your site, your PR will increase.

On occasion Google has a rerank, this has historically happened in spring and autumn. On occasion they have downgraded many sites, but this is to be expected as otherwise they would end up with millions of PR10 sites and that would serve no purpose.

The whole point of a PR score is to give your site a value of worth, this in effect means that if you link to site x and you are a PR4 site then it will be more benefit to him than if your site was a PR2 site. It allows Google to give links from your site a score so that they can be of benefit to whom you link to. The same thing works in reverse so that you benefit from the PR of the site that links to you.

The benefit of getting a link from a PR7 or PR8 page can't be stressed enough. If you can get a link from a PR7 homepage then your site will be spidered by Google every few days and will be considered more valuable.

Thursday, November 22, 2007

Good Links V Bad Links Part VI

It is important to keep on keeping on when link building. Many people give up because they think that they are having little or no impact.

The bottom line is that you ma need to create 500 links before your site creeps into the top 100 for your primary search term. This can be enough to deter many people from trying, but it should not. If you believe that you will get results if you keep going then it will give you more incentive to sit down once a month and knuckle down to some serious link building.

Each and every link that you get to your site is different, and as such carries a different weighting with the major SE's. For this reason, some sites might appear to be ahead of you with fewer links to their sites...... this can be for a variety of reasons from the age of their site, to whether it is registered with Dmoz and yours is not for example? The solution is to keep on keeping on........ persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Good Links V Bad Links Part V

Ranking for multiple keywords is no harder that ranking for only two or three. The only difference is the time it will take and the volume of links required.

If you have a large list of keywords then it is important to split them up into related groups so that you can optimize a page for each group.

Once that is done it is just a matter of linking to the specific page with the relevant link text. This process is called deep linking and is a very valuable technique as the major SE's like to see sites with links going to several pages.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Good Links V Bad Links Part IV

It is important to maintain a balance when link building. It is better to use three different link texts and alternate them every 50 links or so. This will keep you within the major SE's limits and help to make your link building to look more organic.

By optimizing your index page for three terms and then linking using those three terms then you will build a wide platform on which your site will rank.

If you have more keywords that you want to rank for then read part V for advice on the most efficient method of achieving for multiple keywords

Monday, November 19, 2007

Good Links V Bad Links Part III

Now you know whaere you should be adding your links it is now important to concentrate your efforts on how your links are going to look. Are you going to have nice pretty banners flashing and flickering, or a picture of your corporate logo? Are you going to be vain or are you going to make each link that you get as powerful as possible?

We come back to basics here.......GOOGLE CAN ONLY READ WORDS........ it is rule number one and should not be overlooked ........... ever.

This means that yes, your links should be text links, forget images, logos, banners etc, you want to get a text link on to a Google ranked page. This link can be further inhanced by doing the following;

1/ Many people use the site URL as the link text ....... this is a waste of effort and a missed opportunity, it is vanity, trying to advertise which is not the primary purpose of your link.

The purpose of this link is to impress Google..... and the best way to do that is to use link text that is your chosen keyword.

Both of these links ultimately lead the visitor to the same site, but only the second one carries serious clout with Google and the other big SE's.

I wouldn't be vain and use the link as an advert, that is not why it is there. The traffic I might get from it on a link page buried within someones site is going to be very low anyway, so forget about that aspect of the link.

The sole purpose of this link is to be counted along with thousands of others in order to give me a top ten ranking within Google and that is where business is generated.

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Good Links V Bad Links Part II

When creating your link on another site, it is vital to remember several points;

1/ The link page that you are asking to have the link placed on should be spidered by the search engine that you wish to rank in. It should ideally be a page with PR but as long as the specific engine that you are targeting knows that the page exists then it is ok.

2/ Your link needs to be on pages that have fewer than 100 links on them. The reason for this is straight forward....... Google as an example only reads and follows the first 100 links on any page. This means that even though you may find a great page, with good page rank (PR) if your link is buried near the bottom past the 100 link mark (and that includes the sites own navigation) then it will do your site no good whatsoever.
It is also worth bearing in mind that if the page is "live" and links are still being added then your sites link could be being bumped down the page so that one day you will be the 90th link on the page and Google will credit you with the link, but a month or so later you might be 110th link on the page and Google will not award you the "credit" for that link any more.

There is not much you can really do to guard against this, as some webmasters don't grasp the effects of their actions, but it is worth being aware of.

Basically the less links a page has the better it is for you to get your link on it.

Good Links V Bad Links

There are millions of sites with which you can exchange links, however, some caution must be used as in the words of George Orwell "not all links are equal."

It is vital that you try to get your links onto good quality sites. The reasons for this are simple, firstly, there is little point in getting a link on a site that Google does not rank if your goal is to rank at the top of Google. If the search engine does not know of the page that will contain your link then it will never count it as a "credit" in your favour so you will just be wasting your time by obtaining this link.

By first establishing that Google at least spiders the site then you can be sure that the link that they add pointing to your site will count in your favour. Secondly you are looking for sites that Google likes alot. These will have a page rank (PR) value, and obviously the higher the better where possible. The actual PR of the link page is of less importance than the index page of the site, which many people fail to appreciate. However it is important to check that the link page is ranked otherwise you will once again be wasting your time.

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Optimization made easy part 2

It is important to remember to never over complicate a site. Far too often designers use every trick in their arsenal just because they have the ability to use it. Quite often this can be detrimental to seo and site rankings.
Always keep a site simple so that the SE's can read it easily. That way at least the SE's will know what your site is all about which is a great starting point!

Thursday, November 01, 2007

Optimization made easy

Start the month as you mean to go on, contact websites that you would like to link with and start the process. It is the only long term method of success.

Link....Link....Link.......

Here's to a happy month in the warm, linking away to our hearts content!


Thursday, October 25, 2007

How to Optimize a website part 9

If you have followed this blog so far you will by now have a website that has been optimized to rank well in Google and the other major SE's. You will have carried out all the on page optimization, including title, metatags, headings, alt tags, and the footer. You will have registered your site with google, Yahoo etc, created and submitted an xml sitemap and made sure that you have verified your site with both Google and Yahoo.

You will have started your link management campaign and might even have started to see some results already.

If you need more high quality links then why don't you start guest blogging?

Monday, October 22, 2007

How to Optimize a website part 8

Persistence is a valuable asset when you set out on the road of the optimizer. At first nothing will happen...... you will question whether you are doing the right things?...... or overdoing the right things?......... or under doing the right things?....... or wasting valuable time........ all of these thoughts will run through your mind at some point, and when they do you need to be prepared to keep on keeping on....... as Winston once famously put it.

It is all to easy to give up, become despondent and retreat back to PPC with your tail between your legs, but persistence will triumph in the end if you keep on keeping on. Gather links at a steady rate, of a good quality with valuable link text....... then you will achieve the ranking that you are seeking......

Either that or you can ring me and I will be persistent and determined on your behalf!......

08456 432123


Tuesday, October 09, 2007

How to Optimize your site Part 7

The most important aspect of effective SEO is to remember that "softly, softly catchy monkey", less is definately more. It is very important to do little and often rather that doing too much at once. . . . . . What exactly is "too much?" I hear you cry. . . . . as we have already discussed Google and the other major SE's operate by using a complex algorithm. This is basically a series of yes/no questions to your website, for example, how many links have been added in the past month, what is the link text of these links, what is the keyword density on each page, ...... etc. For each of these questions Google has a limit beyond which your site will be penalised.

Google is looking to provide useful search information to its customers, it is trying to organise all of the sites within its realm. It wants to see good high quality information on a site, with images and logos that are related to the site. It then looks to see which sites link to you and what those pages are all about as well as the link text. All of these factors add up to provide the position where you rank. If you add a limited quantity of high quality links, say less than 100 per month and do that every month using keyword text for your top three search terms on a rotation basis. Then assuming that the sites that you get the links from are themed along with your site then you will rank well.

Of course it might require more than that in order to rank in the top 5 but persistance and determination will succeed given time. Patience is a virtue.


Tuesday, October 02, 2007

How to Optimize your Website - Part 6

It is very important to remember that too much of anything regarding seo will more than likely harm your campaign. Google and the other major engines all operate within an algorithm that dictates what it considers to be normal behaviour and what it considers to be spam. If you are patient and bide your time adding 25 links per week for a year instead of 500 in week one then you will not incur the wrath of the engines.

If you bear in mind that you should design your pages for humans not spiders, but in such a way as the spiders can get the most from them. By doing this you will have a page of rich content that is not only popular with your visitors, but also with the SE's. If you focus too much on SE's only you will have a site that is not friendly for your real visitors which lets face it is the reason that you have the site in the first place.

If in doubt, less is more.


Thursday, September 06, 2007

How to Optimize your Website - Part 5

Best Linking Practice.

Linking is without doubt the most important part of your optimization strategy. It is important therefore to spend some time making sure that you are doing as much as you can to promote your site correctly.

There are many misconseptions regarding linking, but as long as you follow the following points you will create a solid foundation for your website.

Firstly remember that in the beginning very little will happen, you will get some links to your site and yet you will still not rank very well. It is at this point that most people give up assuming quite wrongly that they are doing something wrong. It is important that you keep going, every link that you get to your site is one link closer to how many your site needs to rank first.

Important rules to follow;

-Limit the quantity of links that you get in any month to less that 125 max. More than this will have a negative effect and can lead to your site being sandboxed by Google. Sandboxing is like being quarantined for up to 18 months and excluded from the rankings. This can happen to new sites that often try too hard too early. If you think that your site has been sandboxed contact me through my site Search Engine Optimization as I have a few methods that can get your site back from the sandbox much quicker.

-Start by linking to your index page, using your main keyword as the link text.

-Try to get as many of your links as possible from Google friendly sites with a PR score. This will help Google to rank your site quicker.

- If you want to rank in the UK then get links from as many .co.uk sites as possible, for worldwide then .com sites work best.

- Get your link added to pages with less than 100 links on them. Google only reads the first 100 links on a page including navigation so if your link is at the bottom of a very busy page then Google will never count it.

- Reciprocal linking is the easiest to manage as it is easy to use software that will check if a site is still linking to your site. The problem with reciprocal links is that Google knows that they are a tit for tat process, so it is slowly devaluing them. Google wants to see totally natural links whereby you appear to add a link to a site from yours purely because you think it is a good useful site. This is called one way linking.

-It is much harder to effectively manage a one way linking campaign, but the rewards are worth the effort if you do. The idea is that instead of site a linking to site b and b linking to a, you use two sites that you have access to , and when contacting a potential link site, you offer to add his link to site a if he links to site b from his. This as I said gets very complicated which is why I prefer to use a software program to run the process for me.


- Try to get links from topic sites or topical pages, so if you have a gift shop, a link from a site about sailing is still ok if the site has a section in its link directory called "Gifts". It is not vital for the link page to have its own page rank, but it does help. As long as the index page of the site has a pr then one day the page containing your link will too.

- If you can get a link on the home page of a site it will boost your rankings no end. A link on the home page of a PR7 site will get spidered daily and your site will be highly regarded because of it. Some PR7 sites sell such links and in certain circumstances they are a worthwhlie investment in order to get your site ranking as quickly as possible. Be warned they are not cheap!

Next time I will discuss linking strategies further.





Sunday, August 26, 2007

How to Optimize your Website - Part 4

Linking Strategies.

Once you have your pages optimized as you want them to be, you will need to get some other sites to link to your site. There are several important points to bear in mind when you contact sites in order to get them to link to you.

Google will only "credit" your site with a link from a site that it knows of, this means that you should aim for links from sites that have a Google PR score. To find out what the PR score of a site is, visit my site Search Engine Optimization and use the PR tool on the home page.

This also makes certain that you do not get links from banned or dubious sites that will in fact harm your ranking rather than improve it.

You ideally want to get a link from a page that has a related subject as this will make the link more valuable. This can be difficult as many sites will not want to advertise the competition on their sites, however there are solutions to this, as getting links from a page on a site that includes your keywords will do the trick. In many cases a site will have a directory of links or resources which will be divided into sections that may be named with something related to your site keywords.

If you want to get a head start on your link building then submit your url here and you will start to generate one way links to your site. One way links are the best kind of link to get as the GYM SE's favour them over reciprocal links.

For further information visit my site here Search Engine Optimization

Next time I will discuss linking further

Saturday, August 25, 2007

How to Optimize your Website - Part 3

Titles, meta tags, alt tags etc

By now you will have your desired keywords that you want to optimize your site for. Firstly you want to include your keywords in your page Title. Keep it at 36 characters or less, and separate each keyword with a divider. Put the most important first, followed by the others in decreasing order.

These terms need to be included in both metatags, description and keywords. There are less and less search engines using the metatag keywords, but some do so it makes sence to include them. Your metatags should be limited in length, the longer they are the less effective they are, and can be ignored completely if they exceed 280 characters.

Each of your images can be labeled with your keywords by using alt text, make sure you add either "image 1", or "photo 1" etc after each line of alt text so that the GYM SE's know what you are labelling.

Where possible you want to use H1, H2, H3 headings etc as these are read and used to help your ranking. Make sure then that your headings contain your keywords.

The footer needs to be constructed so that in your footer you can make the last words on your page are your keywords, that way The GYM SE's will look at your page and see that the first and last words are the same, and your page also contains headings, metatags, images etc all called or related to your keywords and they will then rank your site on that basis.


For further information on Search Engine Optimization or Internet Marketing go to http://www.deehoseo.com

Sunday, August 19, 2007

How to Optimize a website - part 2

Optimizing your page.

All optimization begins with the same thing...... CONTENT. What you write on your page will affect how you rank.

Think of it this way, Google and the other big two, Yahoo and MSN which shall from now on be know as the GYM, are looking for good sites that contain good information for their searchers. Regardless of what you may think, Google is only a machine, a machine that can only count 1's and 0's. It justs visits each site and asks questions of it. If you provide the right answers then it will rank you well, if you answer incorrectly or not at all then you will not rank at all.

The GYM sites need words in order to decide what your site is about, without then it can't tell what you want to rank for so it will play it safe and rank you for nothing.

First things first, the GYM sites can't read images, it doesn't matter how good your picture or graphic is, they will only see a blank square, so bear this in mind in your design. Also watch out for links, flash and javascript links can look very nice and can be very clever in their execution, but the GYM sites can't follow them. They can only follow simple hyperlinks, which they also read the names of as they go. This will become important in a later lesson, but for now keep it simple, or....... if you have a flash wizz bang site, add a sitemap link and list your page urls on it so that the Gym sites can at least arrive on your pages and have a look at them.

In addition to this you should create a Google sitemap, but I will cover that in a future lesson.

In the next lesson we will discuss what information to put where on you home page so that it ranks as well as it can.


Saturday, August 18, 2007

How to Optimize a website

 ** UPDATED OCT 2014**

Search engine optimization can be a daunting process if you don't know what you are doing. It is very easy to upset the major search engines by doing too much too quickly so the first rule is..... less is more. Do everything in a measured, gradual manner and you will stay within Googles best practice guidelines.

For example if you add 1000 links overnight then your site will not get very far, however if Google sees your site add 80 links one month and 50 the next followed by 93 the month after that you will start to see results for your efforts.

To begin though you need to optimize you home page so that Google,Yahoo and BING  can read the page and understand what your site is all about. This requires a little homework on your part. First you need to establish your market, then see what traffic exists for your market for specific keywords, using Google keyword tool, then you need to focus your site towards those keywords. For example there is no point optimizing your real estate site for the keyword "Brick House" if there are only a few searches a month for the term. Instead look for the most popular terms with the most traffic, for that is where the money lives. Use a tool like the Google keyword planner to search for your traffic.

Once you have two or three terms or words with good levels of search traffic (12,000 per month minimum) then you are ready to focus your site towards those terms.

Tomorrow I will show you how to optimize your page.

Dave Holland is CEO of Deeho SEO one of the top ranked optimization companies.