7 Key Website Attributes for Good SEO

Effective Web Design is essential for good search engine optimization. If you do not tell the search engines what your pages are all about and what you would like to rank for, how do you ever hope to rank for those terms? Page Title is historically the home of the vane. Often filled with corporate identities, tag lines and in essence, wasted as a result. You have 96 characters that are the very first words that appear on your page….. use them wisely for your main keywords.

Alt Text is the text that appears in place of your images if a visitor has images disabled. A happy by product is that although the search engines can’t read image content, they can read your alt text on each of your images. Make sure that you fill the alt text with your main keywords for every image on your page.

Use Heading Tags to focus your keywords for search. The search engines love to see Heading tags used as they indicate what a paragraph or section of your page is going to be about. The more focused your pages, with tight focused Headings the better, as they will be viewed as high quality content and ranked as such.

Each of your pages should ideally be focused on just one subject. If the search engines see that your page is all about one thing from start to finish, it will conclude that it is a better page than one that discusses lots of different subjects. As a direct consequence you will rank higher with that page.

The search engines can only rank you for words that it can find within your content. The more frequently it finds each keyword, the more important your page will be considered for that keyword…. Up to the point when you will be thrown out for keyword spamming. To avoid this, write naturally, fro your readers, but pay attention to what the search engines need to see too.

If the search engines can’t follow your links then your pages will never be found or ranked. Websites designed using Flash, or with Java Script Menus can often suffer in search as the content is inaccessible. Plain simple web design will give you the best search engine rankings.

If you are tempted to cheat by using underhand practices to improve your rankings then be aware of the consequences when you get caught… which you will. Your site will be removed from the rankings and you will have little recourse to getting it re listed. There is little benefit to using “Black hat” techniques as you will be reported if you try to rank for competitive search terms, and if you are targeting low traffic keywords…. Why bother in the first place?

In Summary, concentrating on effective design is essential for good SERPS, planning your site layout before it is build can buy you free rankings that will take a lot longer with an inefficient site design.

Deeho Web Design create search engine friendly, effective websites that deliver results in search.

Start Getting New Sales Leads for your Website & Beat the Recession

It is worth pointing out here at the beginning that I do not sell SEO (Search Engine Optimization), what I sell is website traffic, high quality website traffic that works for my clients. How that traffic is actually achieved is in reality of little importance to my clients.

Too many people are hung up selling their service when they would be far more successful selling the results of that service. People don't want to diet plan, they want to look and feel good. People don't want 18 inch thich roof insulation, they want small heating bills etc

As "Walls" once advertised, sell the sizzle not the sausage.

If you want to create more sales leads, then solve more problems for your customers. We are all in the problem solving business, the key to success is to sell the solution, not the product.
Once you have defined your solution and the target demographic likely to suffer from the problem that you can fix, you will need to get in front of them. Preferably masses of them, preferably when they are ready to buy, with their cash in their hand.....

So where do these prospects live? Where do they hide? Where do they go when they are looking to buy your problem solving solution? More and more the answer is online....

Google dominates the search market which is where over 80% of people online find the things that they are going to buy. Yes, there are a large number of "windowshoppers" as well, but if you set yourself up properly then you will capture all of the window shoppers email addresses so that you can sell to them at a later date. After all, they are at the very least a "Warm" lead if they are looking for your solution in the first place.

Google operates by ranking websites in order of perceived importance, based upon two things, "on-page" information and "off-page" information. The "on-page" information includes all of the written content on your pages as well as page title, alt text, meta data, page headings, image names, etc

The "off-page" information is a measure of your sites popularity, in simple terms Google looks around at how many other websites link to yours...... the site with the most links is the winner.
To get to the top of the rankings you will need to conduct "Due Diligance" with regard to the keywords that you want to rank for. It is a time consuming process getting to the top so you want to make sure that when you do achieve top rankings that you will be rewarded with lots of high quality traffic.

Next post will cover "Keyword Choice"

PR Juice

 **UPDATED Nov 2014**

Google PR is far less relevant than it once was. Instead of focusing your efforts on creating high PR links, it is far more beneficial to your ranking efforts to focus on the categorization of the pages linking to your content. See http://www.deehoseo.com/search_engine_optimization/backlink-category-relevance.php for more information.

Having said that, Google PR is still a metric that has an influence, and is an overall indicator of the authority of the links pointing to the page. The higher PR relevant category pages you can build links on the better.

There is a lot spoken about PR Juice, how to get it, what it does and how it can help you, not all of it is useful information though.

The most important aspect of PR is that it is a tool used by Google to establish the value of a link from your site. Yes, it is a measure of your sites worth in the eyes of Google, but it alone will not improve your ranking. A PR 1 page can out rank a PR 7, but I would rather have the link from the PR 7 any day.

PR Juice is the effect that PR sites that link to you can have on your site. If you can get lots of PR 6 sites to link to you then you will gain from their PR Juice. This is for the simple reason that Google will see your site as being "recommended" by many "authority" sites. If you continue to collect links from established high value PR sites such as these, you too will become an "authority" site in the eyes of Google and that my friend is the power of PR Juice.

PR from a page is shared between the pages it links to, so a PR 7 with one external link passes most of that PR to the linked page, however, a PR 7 with 100 external links divides the PR7 between the 100 linked sites, severely reducing the influence the page has.

Paid Links....

 ** UPDATED Nov 2014**

Further to previous comments made here, Google seems to be concentrating its efforts on protecting the integrity of it organic listings. The best way for it to do this is to prevent larger organisations from buying their way to the top via paid links.

Google even encourages webmasters to report paid links!!

The tightrope currently being walked is tricky to get right, for in effect Google is a seller of paid ads themselves. In actuality they are a publisher who displays dutch auction ads on their pages, and not much more..... but the sum of the parts quite frequently adds up to more than the individual components.

When is a paid ad a banner? Are all banner ads going to be penalised? In which event many Google adsense campaigns would surely fall foul?

I get the feeling that it is more the case of being seen to be doing something rather than actually doing something that is the important issue here.

There is no doubt that many sites that rank highly in Google for very competitive keywords have paid links pointing to them.

Is a paid directory classed as a paid link?...... only it seems if it is a low quality directory! High quality directories are ok by Google.

Online Reputation Management

I'm back from my travels in the far east and yes it is indeed far.

I have been drawn to the latest seo bolt on service, namely Online Reputation Management or to put it another way, the art of making sure that bad news gets buried and lots of lovely good news rises to the top and masks the bad.

This prctice is increasingly being used not only my the rich and famous, but by the not so rich and the not so famous. It is increasingly normal these days to "Google" a new partner, business associate, colleague etc and as such if you are not careful you can soon find your reputation tainted through no fault of your own. In these inlightened times, the net is alive with information and with the rise in popularity of the blogging, facebook etc it is now easier than ever for any disgruntled client, customer, lover, journalist to paint a less that savoury picture of you.

This is where the top SEO companies such as ourselves come in. We can in some cases remove some of the unflattering material (although this is very difficult to do) and then we bombard your name with more suitable content, blogs, websites articles etc and then promote them into the top listings. This has the effect of pushing the unwanted material down the rankings onto the second or third page where it will do less harm to your reputation.

A search in Google for Kate Moss will show that she has recently had her name cleaned. As in the listings all of the more selatious stories about her are on the second and third pages and the top ten results are filled with only positive listings. In light of her recent news worthiness this would not be the case if the results were ranking completely naturally.

Google works in much the same way as the rest of the world in that bad news travels further than good news.

Directory Submission

A lot is made of Directory Submission and Search Engine Submission in chat rooms and within various seo related forums. I am quite concerned for any unsuspecting customer who could quite easily get taken in by one of the thousands of sites that offers to sign you up to thousands of directories every month for a few pounds. It is often claimed that using such a "service" will promote the target site within the major search engine......... which is highly debateable.

Two main reasons prevent this service from being as much use as it appears;

1/. If your site was actually added to thousands of directories every month then your site would be removed from the main search engines as you would have tripped the main link volume filter operated but the majors.

2/. The shear volume of links they claim they will add implies that it is nothing more than a piece of software they will be using to submit your site automatically. The standard and quality of the links will be either very poor or terrible.

Ask yourselves this question " If this service works so well in promoting a website and moving it up the rankings in the major search engines.... where are the vendors ranking in Google?"

If they are in the top ten then have a look at exactly how they have achieved it. Just because a site is there today, don't immediately assume that they have been there for years or will be there in a years time. Some unscrupulous "Black Hat" seo's will happily cloak site after site in order to maintain a "permanent" presence even though it is with different sites. A cloaked site will not last very long at the top of competitive searches, The search engines will remove them as soon as they are found.... permanently. That will happen to your site too if you use their services, except that you wil have already paid them and they will be impossible to find.

Take time to choose your seo company carefully and you will be rewarded with long term growth, increased sales and a top ranking to be proud of.

How should you lay out your site? part 4

The next part of your page to concentrate upon is your footer. The reason for this is that when a search engine looks at your page, if it sees that the beginning of the page relates to a subject, the content relates to a subject, the images and logos relate to a subject and finally the footer relates to a subject then it stands to reason that the page it is looking at is all dedicated to that one subject....... and what does Google want to provide for its vast network of searchers??? High quality topic specific websites that provide the information that the searcher needs.

I will discuss the page content in the next section

How should you lay out your site? part 3

The content of your page should be fresh and original. In addition you should try to include your keywords where you can in order that the text is searchable for your topic. The optimum keyword density is important to how well the site ranks, you want to include your keyword 6 - 8 times on the page including in the h1 and h2 tags, for maximum effect.

As you work your way down the page you will need to make sure that your images and graphics have suitable alt text attached to them. If you use your keywords as the alt text, followed by image 1, image 2 etc then you will help your page to rank as well as possible.

How should you lay out your site? part 2

After the logo that you have already located in the top left you can continue your header across the page. If you want to add some flast this is a good place to put it, but remember that Goole and the other SE's will see no more than a white square.

You also need to add some navigation to your site. The simpler the navigation is the better. Google will struggle to follow java script links or clickable images and will also not know what the links "subject" is. If you use text then the links can be read and understood and the pages that you link to will benefit.

Once you have the navigation in place it is time to concentrate on the content for the site. Start with Heading tags. H1 to H6 are important tags and so you should use them whenever you can. You can adjust the size etc using your css style sheet so they do not need to be huge headings on the page. Make the heading tags your prime keywords so that they rank as well as they can.

How should you lay out your site?

If you are at the planning stage then you have the ideal opportunity to create a site that will be easy to optimize and that will rank as well as it can.

Of course if you are working with an existing site then you will be somewhat stuck with the design that you have. As long as the index page of the site isn't just a pretty flash entry page you will have something to work with.

However if you have a blank page but want some interaction on your site how can you lay it out so that you will still rank well?

Firstly you want to have either an image or logo in the top left corner. This is the first thing that the SE's spider will look at and although it can't see the image or logo it can read the alt text that you can put behind it.

How to analyse a niche part 4

Another good indicator when deciding upon a niche is to run a short term Adwords campaign. This will help in several ways as it will give you the main traffic keywords and highlight the ones that are a waste of time in the real world.

You will also get a feel for how competitive a keyword is. As a basic rule of thumb, the more adwords ads there are for a keyword, the more expensive it will be to rank on the front page. It follows that the organic listings will mirror this and it will be harder for your site to rank in the top ten the more ads show, and the higher the per click costs are.

If you take an hour to dig deep before you commit to a niche then you will save yourself many wasted hours in the long run.

How to analyse a niche part 3

Detailed analysis is vital if you are to succeed in your quest of top rankings. You can formulate a plan for anything if you know what you are competing against.

The best indication of success is keyword frequency...... if the site that you wish to surpass has used its' url in the majority of its' links then you have the opportunity to make your links more valuable by using the right link text on the right pages.

How to analyse a niche part 2

Once you have selected a keyword how do you go about analysing the top ranked sites?

The can be done in stages, firstly have a look at their PR rank. This will give you an idea as to the value Google places on the site.

Second, have a look at the quantity of backlinks. The is best done currently using Yahoo here;
http://uk.siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/siteexplorer which will show you every link Yahoo is aware of, and also how many pages are currently spidered for the site. This is not an exact figure and every search engine returns different data, but in the main it is the best yard stick. Google for example will only show a few backlinks even though in reality the site may have thousands. This is in part due to the workings of its algorithm, however Google analytics provides accurate data for your own sites, sadly this data is not available for your competitors sites.

Thirdly it is a good idea to have a look at the link text of your competitors links to see if it is an area that you can improve upon. I use SEO Elite for this purpose as it will return detailed results on link PR, page title, link text, as well as alexa rank, etc

If you have a look at the top four or five sites in your niche, not forgetting to also have a look at the main url if an individual page is ranking then you will soon get to grips with how achievable your goals are.

How to analyse a niche part 1

Before you attack a keyword armed with nothing more than enthusiasm and guts it is well worth having a good look at the competition that you are going to face. Top rankings in any niche are achievable if you do more than anyone else has done. The problem arises when you realise that the site that you want to beat is a PR 8, has 100,000 links, is in Dmoz, has existed since 1995 and has the dot com url that is perfect for the niche.............. how do you go about competing with such a site?......

The short answer is to pick battles that you can win...... and for the time being you can't win that one....... but if you work as hard as they did then in five years time your site may well be a worthy adversary to their crown.

If that example was the case for your niche then I would advise initially chasing traffic that you can realistically attain. It is important to walk before you can run, but while still keeping your eyes on the big picture.

Quality over Quantity links

I can't stress enough how important it is to focus your efforts on fewer high quality links rather that lots of low or no value links.

Remember a link is for life, not just for christmas.

A little bit of extra effort to attract the best links that you can will pay dividends in due course.

Creating good linking habits is something worth doing.

Less can often be more.

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

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

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

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.

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