eBook A Practical Guide to SEO
By Wesley M. LeFebvre
http://www.seorankings.com
Preface This free eBook guide is meant to help you focus on the important aspects of search engine optimization (SEO). It’s important that you understand SEO is a time-consuming process, which takes a serious commitment. Result should not be expected overnight. However, the payoff of having a well-optimized website that people love can be HUGE. The goal of this eBook is to help you identify where you should spend most of your time and effort. My advice is based solely on my own experience and expertise. These strategies and resources may not be suitable for every situation. You should always do your own due diligence before acting on anything mentioned in this guide. Please understand that I may also benefit financially from some of the resources mentioned herein. They are included primarily to aid in the production of this guide. With that, thank you for downloading this free eBook and let’s get started!
Table of Contents 1. Choosing a Domain Name 2. Optimizing the HEAD Section 3. Optimizing the BODY Section 4. Importance of Backlinks 5. Taking Advantage of a Blog 6. Crucial SEO Mistakes to Avoid 7. Have You Taken Action? Resource List
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1. Choosing a Domain Name Do you ever wonder why some websites seem to rank at the top search engines so easily while other, seemingly higher-quality websites struggle to get onto the first page? Often it’s because their primary keywords are in their domain name. In some markets that may be all that’s needed, along with some related text to rank on the first page of the search results for those keywords. This seems to be one of the least talked about ranking factors, yet it’s probably the most heavily weighted single factor when it comes to ranking in the search engines. For example, a website named SeattleChiropractor.com is going to have a much easier time ranking for “Seattle Chiropractor” than a website named DrJimDobkins.com. There are a couple of reasons for this: 1. The domain name contains the keywords “Seattle” & “Chiropractor” in it. 2. Other webmasters are more likely to link to it using those keywords in the anchor text. And, for whatever reason Google and the other major search engines have decided websites with keywords in the domain name should be given a lot of weight for those keywords. Good or bad, that’s how it currently works. If you can, I suggest finding a domain name with a couple of your primary keywords in it. That will give you a major leg up on the competition right from the start. However, if you have an already established brand, that may not make the most business sense. You’ll want to weigh your options to determine the best overall strategy for your business. But first you should do your keyword research.
Researching Great Keyword Ideas I’m sure you already have a good idea of the keywords you would like to target for your business. However, it’s important that you familiarize yourself with some of the basic keyword research tools. They will help you identify additional keywords to target when choosing a domain name and optimizing your pages. Google’s Keyword Research Tool is a basic, free tool that requires no registration. I use it for checking keyword ideas quickly.
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There are 3 keyword search types you’ll want to familiarize yourself with:
Broad Match – searches containing the keywords anywhere in the search phrase Phrase Match – searches containing the exact phrase entered, but includes other words Exact Match – searches done for that exact keyword or phrase only
For a more advanced keyword analysis I recently started using Market Samurai. Market Samurai’s keyword research tool takes Google’s data and calculates it providing time-saving, key information.
Finding a Great Domain Name Once you’ve picked out a few keyword ideas, the next step is finding an available domain name. What I usually do is check Go Daddy to see if any of the desired names are available. You can also use their Smart Search feature to get a list of similar available domain names if the one you want isn’t currently available. I recommend using a .com, .net or .org domain name whenever possible. If you have your heart set on a particular name that is already registered to someone else, you still may be able to grab it. The first thing you should do is visit the URL to see if the domain is currently active. Often the registered domain will just have a parked page, or even better yet a “buy this domain” page that will take you to an auction site. Many people, including me, buy a few domains they think they will use in the future and just sit on them or forget about them completely. Here are some steps that can help you secure the best domain name:
Check if it’s available using Go Daddy Visit the URL directly Check the whois record (often for sale information will also be listed here) Contact the owner to see if they would be interested in selling it Search for similar domains on Go daddy or an aftermarket domain marketplace such as SEDO
The age of a domain is another important ranking factor. Bing typically takes several months to start ranking new websites, whereas you can rank well in Google within just a few weeks. Even so, aged domains tend to have an advantage in Google, too. Additionally, I recommend URLs that contain keywords without hyphens because they’re easier to remember and type out. However, when naming your pages I recommend separating each word with a hyphen. Most people don’t remember actual page names anyway. According to Matt Cutts from Google, if you separate keywords with hyphens those pages will be returned for additional keyword combinations. It also makes it easier for users to identify what a page is about when skimming the search results.
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2. Optimizing the HEAD Section The HEAD section of a web page is typically under-utilized, but also very important for search engine optimization. Some of the individual head elements have a direct impact on your search engine rankings and overall search traffic. Below are 5 major elements of the head section that should be considered every time you optimize a web page.
Title Tag The title tag, not to be confused with a title attribute, is usually what search engines use as the clickable text for each organic listing on a search engine results page (SERP). It’s also the text that’s displayed in the title bar at the very top of your browser window. You can edit you title tag by editing it in the source code or updating it in your content management system. A good rule of thumb is to keep your title tag 70 characters or shorter because that’s the number of characters Google displays for each organic search listing. It should be a short, descriptive phrase or two, containing the major keywords you are targeting for that page. Every page in your website should have a unique title tag, with the most important keywords at the beginning. The recommended phrase separators are the “|” and “-“ characters. Fig. 2.1 SEOrankings.com - Organic SERP Listing
Description Meta Tag The description meta tag is one of the most underutilized and underestimated head elements. Within the search results the text from a page’s description meta tag is typically displayed below the clickable text from title tag. Here are a few great reasons to use a description meta tag on your most important pages:
Gives you the most control over what’s displayed on the SERP Increase your click through rate from the SERPs Allows you to Include keyword variants and targeted phrases related to each page
Sometimes Google will display another snippet of text in the SERP if it feels it better serves the users search query, but most of the time it uses the description meta tag set by the webmaster.
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Keyword Meta Tag There’s a lot of debate over whether you should continue to use the keywords meta tag or not. Google claims to no longer pay attention it; however Bing says they continue to. I suggest not worrying too much about the keywords meta tag. I rarely, if ever, use it. And, I’ve never in recent years noticed any ranking benefit from it. I only included it in this guide because I know you’re likely wondering about it.
Robots Meta Tag The robots meta tag is an alternate and additional way to instruct web crawlers such as Googlebot what to do when it crawls a particular web page. Be sure it’s not inappropriately set on each page. For instance, you may have a page you didn’t want indexed or crawled previously, and now you’re trying to rank that page in the search engines. You’ll need to be sure your robots meta tag is set to crawl and index that page. Having no robots meta tag defined means your page will be crawled and indexed normally. But, what you’ll want to look for are “noindex”, “nofollow” and “noarchive”. If any of those are set, then you’re limiting the ability of search engines to crawl and index that page. For more information about the robots meta tag visit: http://noarchive.net/meta/
Canonical Link Element This last important head element discussed here is the link canonical element. This element is helpful when you have two separate URLs displaying the same information. It helps the search engines determine which URL version is the preferred version and count any links pointing to either version towards ranking the preferred version. It also helps prevent duplicate content issues. For more information on the canonical attribute visit: www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394
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3. Optimizing the BODY Section The BODY section is equally important as the HEAD section when it comes to optimizing a webpage, but it’s also important to your entire website. One reason is because the way you interlink pages can have a dramatic affect on the target and source pages. In this section I’ll cover the four most important elements of the body section: heading tags, hyperlinks, images and content.
Heading Tags The heading tags H1, H2, H3, H4, etc., are often misused and very much taken for granted. Heading tags are used to emphasize text and present structure to the user. Whenever possible, it’s best to use only one H1 tag per page, and use H# tags in order creating a hierarchical structure for your content. Think of the H1 tag as the title of a chapter in a book. You wouldn’t start off a new chapter with two titles would you? However, you may have multiple sections within a chapter so the other tags would be used to represent each section and subsection, etc. If two sections are equally important, then those two sections should probably share the same H# tag. H1 tags should be representative of what you put in the title tag, as should most of the text on the page. Although, having an identical title and H1 tag is fine, you should consider using keyword variants in order to put emphasis on additional terms.
Hyperlinking The way one page links to another can have a dramatic affect on the rankings for both the source and target page. So, it should be obvious that hyperlinking within your website is very important. Likewise, the way external websites link to yours is important too. One of the keys to successful hyperlinking is anchor text. The anchor text is the text that’s displayed as a clickable link. If you’re linking to a page about “electric cars”, then a hyperlink using the anchor text “electric cars” would be ideal for helping users and search engines identify what the target page is about. Text links are preferred over image links, but if image links are used be sure to use the alt attribute similar to the way you would write the anchor text of a text link. I’ll go into optimizing images shortly.
Content Search engines absolutely love content, and so do end-users. The content on each page should be unique, approximately 500 words or more; and include the targeted key phrases, synonyms and related keywords in order to reinforce your targeted terms. But, be careful to not “stuff” keywords within the content so that it reads poorly. This creates a bad user-experience, and search engines don’t like it either. Use italics, bold and bullets where they make sense in order to direct users and search engines to important information within the page. Google is also big on fresh content. Finding ways to keep your website “fresh” is a good way to get Google coming back to it more often and increasing its overall search rankings. One of the best ways to do this is by publishing a blog, which I’ll discuss in section 5.
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Images When used properly, images give users and search engines additional clues regarding what a page is about. Be sure to use the alt attribute whenever you add an image to a web page. Since search engines can’t see images like humans do, the alt attribute tells search engines what a particular image is. The alt attribute should be short and descriptive. For instance, if there’s an image of a blue Nike shoe, the alt attribute should say “blue Nike shoe”. The alt attribute is especially helpful when using images as links. Similar to the anchor text of a text link, the alt attribute tells search engine what the targeted page and image is about. It’s also good to use keywords in the image name. An image named blue-nike-shoe.jpg is much better than and image named image3.jpg.
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4. Importance of Backlinks Equally important to the on-page optimization of your website is getting quality inbound links (backlinks) to it. Even if you’ve optimized your on-page perfectly, when it doesn’t have any backlinks you won’t be very competitive in the search engines for the terms you are targeting. In the most competitive niches, you’ll be lucky to get a couple of clicks a day. There’s no specific number of backlinks that will guarantee your success. It depends on your on-page optimization, market and competition. Unlike optimizing the pages of your own website, getting people to link to you can be much more challenging.
Easy ways to get some quick backlinks to your website:
Link to it from your other websites or blogs Submit it to free business directories (ex. HotFrog, DMOZ.org) Link to it from your social networking and business profiles (ex. Linkedin.com) Submit a free press release (ex. prlog.org) Ask a friend to link to it from their website Write related articles and submit them to article marketing directories (ex. Ezinearticles.com) Submit guest posts on related websites (see myblogguest.com) Bookmark it using social bookmarking websites (ex. Reddit.com) Participate in forums
Just be sure you understand the nofollow attribute and URL redirection so you don’t waste you time trying to obtain backlinks that won’t help increase your search engine rankings. You can use our tool to check a web page for nofollow links. I recommend gradually building backlinks to your website. Too many manual or automatic backlinks all at one time can set off red flags with the search engines. And, I definitely don’t recommend paying any company offering to get you thousands of backlinks. Do it yourself or hire a reputable SEO firm to do it for you. None of the good firms will make extravagant claims and promote worthless techniques like submitting your site to thousands of web directories.
Submitting to Web Directories This is usually one of the most enticing ways to get backlinks to your website because it’s so easy. While this is a very legitimate way to obtain backlinks, I wouldn’t put all of your effort here. Submitting to some directories will indeed help your rankings, however most of the web directories are worthless and don’t help at all. It’s best to find ones related to your industry. For example, if you’re a lawyer, spend time looking for lawyer directories to submit to first, then perhaps a few high-quality general web directories.
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5. Taking Advantage of a Blog There’s no denying blogs have taken off over the last several years. If you have a website or a business, you need to seriously consider using a blog as a promotional tool. Blogs are great for search engine optimization and building communities. There’s much debate regarding how often you should post to your blog, so my recommendation is finding what works best for you and be consistent. I shoot for twice a week on SEOrankings.com. I’ve noticed that when I am consistently blogging twice a week or more my search traffic and return visitors increase week over week. However, when I miss a week the traffic seems to die off just as quickly. So as you can see, consistency is really important.
How Blogging Helps with SEO
Allows you to promote and link to your products and services Attracts natural backlinks Allows you to submit to blog, feed and additional web directories Gets picked up by feed aggregators Keeps your website “fresh” with content Attracts additional search traffic
There are several easy-to-use blogging platforms available. Blogger.com and Wordpress.com are two of the most popular third-party blogging platforms that allow you to get a blog up and running within just a few minutes for free. The problem with running your business blog on a third-party website is that you have limited capabilities. Any backlinks you obtain will be pointed there rather than to your main website. For instance, setting up a blog on Blogger.com and Wordpress.com will give you URLs similar to these: yourblog.blogspot.com and yourblog.wordpress.com. Rather than www.yourwebsite.com/blog or blog.yourwebsite.com. Although there are some benefits to setting up a blog on the third-party websites too, I recommend setting up a self-hosted blog instead. When you use a web host like Inmotion Hosting or HostGator as I do, you’ll be able to set-up a selfhosted blog just as fast as you would one of the third-party blogs. This will also be free. To set up your own self-hosted version of Wordpress simply go to YourDomain.com/cpanel, then log in, scroll down near the bottom and click on Fantastico De Lux, then click on Wordpress in the list of options on the left hand side, click new installation, fill in the form and click install Wordpress. Then, to access your new installation go to YourDomain.com/wp-admin or yourdomain.com/<install folder>wp-admin, depending on where you installed it.
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You can find a huge selection of free Wordpress themes at wordpress.org/themes. But, if youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re serious about your business then I highly recommended buying a premium theme. Woo Themes offers one of the best selections of high-quality free and premium Wordpress themes. Like nearly everything else in Wordpress, switching to your new theme only takes a few clicks of the mouse.
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6. Crucial SEO Mistakes to Avoid Although there are a ton of ways to SPAM the search engines, this list is only meant to provide you with a summary of the most common honest mistakes people make when doing SEO for their websites. They are in no specific order.
Mistake #1 – Building Your Website Entirely in Flash There are plenty of online website builders that allow you to create a website with them for free. The problem with many of these “free” websites is they build your website entirely in flash. Sure, it might turn out visually appealing, but what good is that if no one can find you? Typically, most of these flash websites limit your SEO capabilities significantly.
Mistake #2 – Poorly Designed Dynamic URLs It’s understandable that you may not be able to build every web page on a particular site by hand. However, the best CMS solutions allow you to control every element of each page. You need to be able to edit the H# tags, meta data and page names. If you can’t, then you should look for a new CMS.
Mistake #3 – Hidden Text In the old days, the use of hidden text used to be an easy and malicious way to gain additional search traffic to your website. Nowadays the search engines are good at identifying pages with hidden text and penalizing them. Avoid making text the same color as your background or hiding it off the screen using CSS. Your hyperlinks should be easily recognizable too.
Mistake #4 – Relying Too heavily on Your Meta Tags and Content One of the biggest mistakes I made when I first tried to do SEO was thinking there was a magic combination when it came to optimizing my Meta Tags and content that would guarantee me top rankings. Yes, they are crucial in some respects, but without backlinks they are pretty much useless.
Mistake #5 – Backlink Spamming It should be clear by now how important backlinks are to your success. But, it’s also important not to get carried away when it comes to backlinking. If you submit to directories, only do a few at time starting with the most relevant and highest quality ones first. Don’t request thousands of backlinks from bunch of web directories all at once. Search engines are good at identifying automatic link submission and try not to count most of them. They may also temporarily penalize you for trying to “game” the system.
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Mistake #6 – Using Images That Display Text Rather Than the Text Itself Earlier I discussed how important your heading tags are (H1, H2, H3, etc.). Often, for reasons I don’t understand, many web designers will create page headings as text images rather than using actual text. That means instead of having the BIGGEST text on the page being text you can copy and paste, it will look like text but actually be an image. This is bad for SEO. All of your page headings should be text wrapped in H# tags.
Mistake #7 – Too Much JavaScript Although Google and the other search engines claim to be able to read Javascript. It’s best to avoid using Javascript whenever possible. That doesn’t mean you should avoid it completely. It can be helpful and has its place. But if there’s an alternate way to achieve the same results then I recommended doing it without Javascript.
Mistake #8 – Poor Anchor Text This applies to internal linking and backlinking. One of the biggest backlinking mistakes is always using your URL as the anchor text. This can help for branding, but isn’t as helpful as it could be for your search engine rankings. Rather than using http://www.seattlechiropractor.com as the anchor text, using variants of “Seattle Chiropractor” will be a lot more helpful for targeting your search terms and ranking for them. Likewise, internal links should contain keywords related to their target page.
Mistake #9 – Keyword Stuffing This one might be self-explanatory, but it’s also one of the most common SEO mistakes made. At one time, having a ton of keywords throughout each page helped your search engine rankings. However, it made for a really poor user experience. Around 2003 Google realized this and made major changes to their ranking system. Now pages with keywords “stuffed” throughout them can set-off red flags that give those pages lower rankings than less popular, better written pages. Having keywords on each page is important, but so is writing in a way that’s pleasing to the end user. Finding a balance between the two is ideal. Including each keyword once or twice within a page is sufficient for SEO.
Mistake #10 – Targeting Too Many Keywords on Each Page Ideally, each product should have its own optimized page rather than trying to optimize each category page for all of the respective products. Although it may be a lot of work in the beginning, it’s the best thing to do long term. Each page in the hierarchy should be optimized individually, i.e., <home page> <category 1> - <product 1>, etc.
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7. Have You Taken Action? So have you taken action yet? Need a little motivation? Start today by following this simple and effective checklist that summarizes the tips provided in the previous sections.
Simple SEO Checklist 1. Do your Keyword Research 2. Choose a keyword rich Domain Name 3. Create keyword rich Page Names using hyphens to separate each keyword 4. Optimize your Title Tag 5. Optimize your Description Meta Tag 6. Optimize your Keywords Meta Tag, if desired 7. Check your Robots Meta Tag 8. Determine if the Canonical Link element is appropriate 9. Ensure your content headings utilize Heading Tags 10. Optimize your Navigational Links 11. Enhance your Content 12. Optimize your Images 13. Start your manual Backlinking campaign 14. Set-Up Your Blog and start posting great content people will want to link to
Extra: Next Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll share with you the primary list of resources I ACTUALLY use. You can always find the updated list here too: http:/www.seorankings.com/resources
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Resource List Multi-Purpose Resources
Market Samurai – An AWESOME keyword research and content promotion program I use for most of my keyword research, competition analysis, and identifying backlink sources. Web CEO – A serious time-saving software program for SEO consultants. The features I primarily use are the Site Auditor, Rank Tracker, Link Popularity Analyzer, Optimization Analysis and corresponding white label reporting features. SEO Toolbar for Firefox – A free toolbar from SEOBook that makes my life so much easier. I love this toolbar because it displays a number of helpful details about every web page I visit on the fly. Features include a backlink estimator, nofollow link finder, traffic estimator and more.
Other Resources I Use Regularly
HostGator – Offers cheap, unlimited, domain hosting plans. I primarily use their reseller hosting plan for my many web projects and to host client websites if needed. HostGator has the BEST support! Inmotion Hosting – Offers super cheap web hosting plans. Currently where SEOrankings.com is hosted. WordPress – By far the simplest and most versatile blogging platform that can also be used as a CMS. Woo Themes – Offers one of the best selections of premium WordPress themes. WPRemix Theme – Versatile WordPress theme that comes with a bunch of easy-to-use, premade templates. I’ve used this theme to build several websites. Ninja Affiliate – Great WordPress plugin that makes it easy to track your affiliate links. I use this plug-in for most of my mine. WP Review Site – Advanced WordPress plugin that allows you and your readers review and rate products. I use this plugin on several websites. Go Daddy – I use Go Daddy for nearly all of my domain name registrations. They have the best prices and email a new promotion every few days. Sedo – I park most of my inactive domains at Sedo. I’ve also sold a handful of domains using their domain auctioning platform. Google AdWords Tool – Free tool that allows you to analyze search traffic for specific keywords, and identify other high-value keywords related to the page you are optimizing. Google Analytics – Probably the best free web analytics solution. Google Feedburner – A web feed management tool that allows you to track a number of stats including total blog subscribers. Allows users to subscribe via email and RSS. Aweber – An easy-to-use email marketing solution for setting up newsletters and autoresponders. PopUp Domination – A really nice popup script that increases your email subscription rates. Comes as a WordPress plugin, and a standalone script for anyone not using WordPress. Salesforce – Great customer relationship platform that makes it easy to manage all of your contacts and track your leads. iStockPhoto – Where I get most of my stock photos for use in blog posts and other web pages.
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Thank You! Thanks much for taking the time to read through this entire eBook. I truly believe this simple guide provides you with much of what it takes to be successful at SEO. Most of the remaining knowledge will come by putting it to practice. No matter how much you read, nothing can replace real life experience, because no two websites or situations are exactly the same. However, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s always new stuff going on and a lot of details to talk about, so be sure to visit http://www.seorankings.com regularly and share your thoughts often. Your input is always appreciated! Last but not least, if you would like to comment on this e-book please feel free to drop me a line at http://www.seorankings.com/contact. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d love to hear from you!
Sincerely, Wesley M. LeFebvre http://www.seorankings.com
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