SEO Tutorial 101
What are search engines looking for?
What many people overlook is that search engines are trying to help their users find some information. They are notlooking for some magical bit of code or text. If someone searches for an acme widget, then that is what the search engines will be trying to find.
It's so simple and basic that many people (even some "experts") think that there is far more to it. I am not saying it is easy to get a #1 rank because there is a lot to do and to take into consideration, but by following some basic rules you can prepare for achieving decent search engine results for the search terms you want!
Keyword Research and Selection
Keyword Research and selection is one of the biggest issues to deal with and it should be tackled right at the beginning of any SEO project, if not at the initial web design stage (often overlooked!).
Many people just guess at what Keyword to optimise a page for and subsequently don't rank well and don't get any targeted traffic. Targeted traffic is after all what you want - not lots of people who are not interested in your site.
Let me use this example, if you are selling "Honda integra neon ground lighting system" then this is most likely your keyword, not "Honda parts" or "Honda performance accessories". You may well get more searches for Honda Parts but all that means is more people clicking back from your site. It is not the targeted traffic you want.
This can at first seem like a daunting task but there are some tools that make it very easy. You can use the Wordtracker keyword database to get ideas of keywords, and how competitive they are how many searches etc.
The Google Keywords Tool is a useful tool for seeing how many people search for various keywords. It would be much better to target 5 people searching for "Honda neon lighting kit" than 5,000 searching for "Honda parts".
Also it is a good idea to see what your competitors are optimising for. Some careful Keyword Research and good use of the afore mentioned tools can help you fine some niche terms which are un-exploited SEO gold mines! They do still exist!
Rear more about Keyword Research Here
On Page Optimisation
Title
It is very important that the title tag (
If you need to optimise for another keyword, create another page. The title tag is perhaps the most important on page SEO you can do.
Keyword Density
Keyword density is simply the number of times that the keywords appear in the body content as a percentage. So a page with 100 words where the keyword appears 4 times would have a keyword density of 4/100 or 4%.
Many so called marketing gurus say you should have a keyword density of 6-10% but if you have ever read a page like this, you wouldn't have read it for long before you clicked the back button! Above all make sure the page makes sense and is readable.
Keyword Proximity
Keyword proximity is similar to keyword density except it is the measure of how close the keywords are to the top of the document. It draws from the assumption that if a keyword is only mentioned once at the very end of the text - the page is probably not that important.
However if you jump in and mention the keyword a couple of times in the first paragraph - it must be more relevant to it. There is no definitive method of measuring keyword proximity.
The best bet is to just create some good readable seo copy and then use the keywords where they make sense.
Linking
Linking is what the web was built on and if used properly can help people navigate the web and find the information they are looking for (and guess what - that's what the search engines are trying to do as well!).
If you have a page that is relevant to another page link to it using some descriptive anchor text. Sites that link to each other with relevant content create a network of relevant information and become far more relevant and useful to users, so guess what! - search engines will rank them higher!
Anchor Text
Anchor text is the text that you click on in a link between the Anchor text tags. Search engines consider the anchor text very important as it describes the page its going to.
Never use "click here" as anchor text unless of course the page it is going to be about click here. The anchor text should reflect the title tag of the page it is linking to.
Page Code
The code that the page uses is also quite important to search engines. Even though they strip out most of the code they still pay attention to h1 tags, paragraphs and font sizes etc (bold text is more important than plain etc). Also good clean code will ensue that the search engines can read the page properly and will not get confused.
Body Content
This is the second most important part of your on page SEO. When producing body content take into account the keyword density, keyword proximity, links and anchor text as well.
The content should be related directly to the keyword that you are optimising the page for. A general rule is that you should have about 300 - 400 words per page.
This is not set in stone though but you should make sure you have enough good content so that someone would actually find it useful.
Image Alt Tags and the Title attribute
Some people still search using text only browsers. This is why the image alt attribute exists (img src="image.gif" alt="Keyword").
The alt attribute describes what the image is about. By making the alt tag your keyword it gives search engines a further indication that you page has something more useful and relevant to that particular keyword.
Another very useful and similar attribute is the title attribute (not tag) which can be used in most html tags (p title="keywords here - this is useful" Some content here).
The title attribute is mainly beneficial as a usability aid, where you can put more info about a particular feature without cluttering the page.
Other tags
The use of h1 Keyword Title /h1 tags is very important as search engines place more relevance on prominent page elements. Use bulleted lists, bold text and titles for important areas and sections of the page.
Fresh Content
Most search engines love fresh and frequently updated content. It is often beneficial to have a random image and paragraph in a side bar on your page. Due to this ever-changing content the search engines will visit and index your page more frequently.
For example, look at the SEO Tip at the top right of this page. That is updated daily with fresh information. That makes search engines and users want to come back and find fresh info.
Dynamic Pages
Some dynamic pages (such as Ecommerce stores or catalogues) can cause search engines a problem, where they have too many attributes.
Generally one attribute is ok but something like www.domainname.com?id=55&code=22345§ion=products&prodid=237 will probably not be indexed. There is thankfully a solution though! You can use apache's mod_rewrite to rewrite dynamic URL's as search engine friendly URL's such as...
www.domainname.com/acme-widget.php. This will then be treated a s a normal page.
Read our SEO Tip about getting rid of Session ID's form your URLs.
An example page
http://www.cranfieldprecision.com - Optimised for the term "High Precision Machine Tools"
The site gets a lot of top ten rankings for relevant search terms, some of which are highly commercial such as "CNC Control Systems", "Air Bearings". View the source and notice how there is only the relevant info in the code and that all layout is controlled by the style sheet.
Link Popularity
Link popularity is a measure of the number of links that point to your site. This determines how popular a site is with other sites.
It is considered that a link to your site is a vote from that site to your site. If a site is worth linking to then it must be good. don't use link farms though as these are considered Spam. It is good to get links to your site but only from relevant sites.
Directory Links
Some directory sites are huge and considered very important. One of the best directories to be in is the Open Directory Project - www.dmoz.org.
Another important directory is the Yahoo directory - www.yahoo.com. These will give your site a higher ranking and will even get new sites indexed quicker.
See our Directory List here
Anchor Text
It is important that all link text pointing to your pages reflects the keywords that each page is optimised for.
What is a ranking algorithm
A ranking algorithm is what the search engines use to list web pages in order of importance relating to a search term. It is a mathematical function that takes several (around 100) factors about your web page into consideration and amalgamates and compares the findings of the formula to rank you page. These are very complicated, highly developed and non-linear functions. This is what SEO is all about, trying to understand the algorithm and make a page that is suitable for it. Quick Note
SEO is not a magical thing that only a few people can do, but a set of rules defined by ongoing SEO research and SEO Testing. Follow these simple steps, read up on all the latest SEO news, use forums etc and put in some time and effort, then you will see some results!
These are just some of the SEO basics to help you get started. We have barely scratched the surface here. It should be noted that whilst On Page optimisation is an essential step in the SEO process it has less and less of an influence the competetive a keyword that is being targeted.
I like to break if down like this, For a less competetive keyword it is 80/20 On / Off Page SEO. For a more competetive Keyword is is 20 / 80 On / Off Page SEO. When you consider the extremes it is almost 100 / 0 or 0 / 100. That being said, optimisation is a process, a set of steps so lots of tiny steps adds up to one leap.