SEO: Search engine optimization

Your site needs to be optimized to be found by search engines when people type in certain words. Search engines like optimized sites because this makes it easier for them to work out what the site is about.

Search engine results are ordered by relevance first, and page rank next. For example, if two sites are equally relevant, then the site with the higher rank will appear first. If a page with a high rank is less relevant than a page with a lower rank, the lower ranked page will show up first.

This is why it is vital to optimize your site to make it relevant to certain searches which you want to target.

Keywords

The first step is to decide which words will be searched for. It is a common mistake to target a word which not many people actually type into a search engine.

Services such as Wordtracker can help with determining which words should be targeted.

Another way to find out which keywords are actually entered into Google is to set up a Google AdWords account. (You don't have to actually activate a campaign and spend money). Your AdWords account has a tool called a "Keyword Tool" which allows you to view which words are entered into Google.

Once you know your keywords and key phrases - then you can optimize your site for these words and phrases.

How to Optimize your Website?

1. URL

The URL should contain keywords that you are targeting. If you can get keywords into the domain name, that's even better.

eg. if you are targeting widgets, then the domain name should be  widgets.com   or have the word widgets in it.

If you can't get the keyword or key phrases into the domain name, then get it into the URL.

eg.  if you are targeting "widget gruntbuglys"  then the URL of the page should contain those words. It would look like this;

       http://www.optomforum.com.au/widget-gruntbuglys.html

Search engines seem to isolate individual words out of the domain name even if you don't have a space. Dictionary words are usually isolated well.  eg.  for the domain optomforum.com.au  the search engines will recognize the word "forum" if the search is for the word "forum". However, for other parts of the URL if is better to clearly separate the individual words with a "-". Search engines read the "-" sign like a space.

2. Title

The title is the text that appears as the title of the window in the browser. The HTML code for the title is in the header section of the HTML code and it looks like this; <title>insert text here</title>

The title of the page is one of the most important things that tells the search engine what the page is about. Don't bother putting your website name into the title if it doesn't fit. It is more important to put the keywords into it. Keep in mind that the title of the page is what appears with most prominence in search engine results, so make sure it makes sense.

Do not repeat the same word in the title.

Only the first 80 characters of a title are seen in the Internet Explorer title bar, but search engines can read a few extra characters. Do not go much over 80 characters.

Make sure each page on your site has a different title. Webdesigners inexperienced with SEO techniques make the mistake of giving the same title to each page.

3. Headers.

Headers are vital. This is often neglected by webdesigners who focus on the graphical appearance of a page. There must be text headers containing the target keywords.  A header looks like this  <h1> header text  </h1>

There are different levels of header. Try to keep to some sort of hierarchy, so the main headers are H1, sub-headers are H2 etc.  h1 headers are quite big, but the  style sheet in the template you are using should have shrunk it down. If it hasn't, you can reduce the size like this;
 <h1><small> header text  </small></h1>

You can add extra <small> commands as needed.

Beware of people who argue that headers are not important. Using headers is very consistent with the principles of relevance.

4. META Tags.

META Tags were developed for the original search engines such as Alta Vista as a way to tell the search engine what the page is about. They are not as useful with todays search engines. They are contained in the header part of the HTML code for each page.

Make sure each page has different Meta tags. Webdesigners inexperienced with SEO techniques make the mistake of giving the same meta tags to each page.

META Description Tag:

This tag is a short description of the page.  It is often what appears as part of the search results for your site. If the search words appear in the description tag then your description tag will appear as part of the search engine result. Having a good description may help with getting someone to click on the link.

Make sure it explains to a human what the page is about in as few words as possible - it should include keywords.  If you don't have a META Description tag, and your site is listed in dmoz, then the dmoz description of your site will appear on the Google results page.  Being listed in dmoz is very good for your site - as explained in the Page Rank section below - however the dmoz description is often not very helpful.  You should have a meta description tag as this gives you control of the description. If you are not listed in dmoz and you don't have a meta description tag, then Google will automatically generate a description from text on the page.

It is in your interest to control the description by having a meta description tag. 

an example of a Meta Description tag is below:

<meta name="description" content="Optom Forum. Optical Industry Directory and Forum for Australian Optometrists and Optometry students to discuss issues relevant Optometric Practice Management and other issues relevant to Optometry. ">

META Keyword Tag:

This is a way for you to tell the search engine which keywords you think are important on that particular page. Keep in mind that the keyword tags are only of value if the same keywords are also used in the text of the page, do not use too many keywords - the example below is too long. Current wisdom is to not use more than 10 keywords. The search engine may compare what you think the page is about with what its own analysis of the text says the page is about. It is in your interest to ensure that the meta tags are consistent with the text on the page.  Many web designers think that putting keywords into the meta tags is sufficient, and they don't put the same keywords into the text.

Google apparently ignores the meta keyword tag but other search engines may use it.

Some argue that this tag should actually be used for keywords that are not in the text of the page. This argument is not consistent with the principles of search engine design - why reward words which are not on the page? - This would not help with relevance. In fact, in the past webdesigners added irrelevant words to this tag to generate extra traffic. For this reason putting in irrelevant words is unlikely to work now.

example of a meta keyword tag;

<meta name="keywords" content="optometrists forum, optometry discussion board, optical industry, optical bulletin board, optometry forum, optical forum, optical industry, optometric practice management, optical practice management, optometry online, optometry classifieds, optometry locum, optom forum, optometry practice, optometric equipment, eyetesting equipment, Medicare provider, practice management software, optometry business, staff management, starting practice ">

5. Content.

The text of the page must contain all keywords and phrases that you are targeting. The text under each header should be relevant to that header and also the title. Try to target phrases as well as individual words. Do not overuse the keywords, as this could get your site removed from a search engines index. Aim for 3% to 6% usage of keywords in the text. There are web resources which will analyze your page for such statistics. Do not try to target all possible keywords into one page. Optimize different pages for different searches. Do not make any page too big, if you have lots of content then split it between pages.

Content is supreme.  All else is pointless if you don't have relevant content.

6. Links

All pages should link to all other pages within 2 clicks. The home page should link to every other page within 2 clicks.

Links must be static HTML links. Links used in menus are often javascript links which are not followed by search engines. Therefore, it is good to have static links as well. You will see that most sites have text links at the bottom of the page for the search engines, as well as the javascript links in the menu for humans

The number of internal links to a certain page from other pages on your site shows the search engine how important that page is in your site. Try to ensure that there are quite a few links between all pages on the site, preferably from within the text, do not just rely on links at the bottom of the page. If there are lots of links to one particular page, then that page is more likely to come up in search results, as it appears to be more important.

To link between pages, make sure that the text around the link (and also the text that is clicked) is relevant to the page that the link is linking to. Do not just have "click here" as the link. Search engines judge what a page is about by the words used to link to that page.

Linking to external relevant sites helps with relevance.  Regularly check that all external links are correct, and the site you link to has not changed. This is important as it shows if your site is a quality site with correct information.

7. Overdoing It.

The purpose of search engine optimization is to tell the search engine what the site is about. Search engines do not like being manipulated into giving results that are not relevant. Therefore;

Do not have everything perfect in a competitive category - ie. exactly the same words is URL, Title, Headers, Meta Tags, Alt tags, link text, inbound link text. If it looks overdone, then it probably is. It and may get you panalized. I know the rest of this page says to do these things, just don't overdo it.

Do not have any text obscured by graphics, search engines may think you are hiding something. Even if only a small part of the text is covered.

Do not have the text colour and the background colour the same.

Do not do anything that cannot be seen by humans.

Do not over-use keywords. If any keyword comprises more than 10% of the text then this looks suspicious. However, in some cases this may be unavoidable if it is the nature of the site.

Do not create mirror sites - ie. other sites with the same content. If you have other sites, make sure they are different.

Do not create mirror pages within your site. If you have two pages the same, make sure one of the pages is marked no-index  and  links to it are marked no-follow. Mark one of the mirror pages as no index in the robots.txt file. No-index tags can also be used to concentrate rank to certain pages.

Do not create a page containing only keywords. Do not have lists of keywords.

Do not have any keyword used too often. Do not target too many keywords on any page. (Alt tags can also have too many keywords.)

8. Sitemap.xml

Create an sitemap.xml  file by visiting sites such as  http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
Upload your sitemap.xml file to your public html directory on the server. This file can be edited by an editor such as AlleyCode (using xhtml as the file type)
This file is read by most search engines and it gives them a list of all the pages on your site. The search engines will not necessarily follow the links in the sitemap.xml file if they cannot get to the same page by following normal links in the web pages. Make sure that all pages can be accessed by folllowing links. The sitemap file is just an extra tool to help the search engines.

9. robots.txt

Create a robots.txt  file. This is just a text file (you can write it in notepad or Alleycode) that goes to the public html directory. Most search engines visit this file first. The robots.txt file can tell search engines which pages they should not index, where the sitemap.xml is etc.

the robots.txt file may just consist of one line, giving the location of the sitemap.xml file.  eg.

Sitemap:http://www.optomforum.com.au/sitemap.xml

All major search engines look for the robots.txt file every time they look at your site. Make sure you have one, even if if doesn't contain much useful information.  Some people choose to hide their sitemap.xml file by giving it a different name, and submitting it to the search engines directly. They may do this to hide all their landing pages from their competitors.  If you want to hide the sitemap file then you should still have a robots.txt file. It could just contain instructions to follow all links and index all pages - the correct syntax for this is available online.

10. Error Pages:

If someone types a URL that doesn't exist then a 404 error message appears. Apache servers allow you to make a custom error page. Create a file called 404.shtml using AlleyCode. Upload this to you public html directory. This file should be based on your template for your other pages. It should simply say something like,  "Error 404: The page you have requested has moved or the URL has been typed incorrectly. Please use the menu to navigate this site."

The coding for all internal links in this page should give the full URL instead of just the filename.

(eg. any link following the command  href  should look like http://www. optomforum.com.au/filename.html  instead of just filename.html)  This way it will work from any directory someone may type into the URL.

You can make 403.shtml and other error pages in the same way.

Having error pages will reduce the damage caused to your site's credibility by broken links. Obviously, you should not have broken links in the first place.

11. Search Engine Webmaster Account

Set up webmaster accounts with Google, Yahoo, and MSN at the following sites. Upload your sitemap.xml file to the search engines through your account.
The Google account is particularly useful in assessing your site. To set up these accounts, you must be able to upload certain files to your server for verification that you really are the webmaster.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
http://webmaster.live.com/

12. Flash Graphics and Animations to show text.

Google has recently announced that they will start indexing shockwave flash (swf)  files that contain text in a readable format.  This means that this sort of file is now good to use.  In fact using SWF instead of image files for headers is now recommended.

Other forms of flash and SWF which does not contain text readable to search engines is still not recommended. Many users find flash animations annoying.  Firefox browser has a plug-in available which disables flash animations.

Also, avoid having text in image files. This is also unreadable to search engines.

13. Images

Search engines cannot read what is in an image. However, you can give them an idea from the name you give the image. For example, instead of giving an image a filename of   pic1.jpg   call it   optometrist-chart.jpg  

alt tags should be used to give a brief description of every image.

The filenames of the images and the alt tags should use the keywords that are being targeted on the page. Text near the image helps with describing the image.

If an image is used as a link to another page on your site, then the name of the image (and the alt tag) should be relevant to the page it is linking to.

What is Page Rank?

If you install Google Toolbar and enable page rank, you will see that most pages are ranked on a scale of 0 to 10. The scale is exponential, meaning that each rank is an order of magnitude higher than the previous rank. Page ranks are only updated every few months. Google also has a site rank for each site, which is not shown on Google toolbar.

Google calculates your page rank by counting and analyzing how many links to your site it finds on other sites. This gives an idea of how important your site is.

Links to your site from sites with a high rank are worth a lot more than links from sites with low rank.

If a site links to you, and you link back to them, it is not worth as much as if they link to you only.

The idea is that if your site is truly important and useful then lots of sites will link to it.

How to build Page Rank?

This is quite difficult because the best way to do it is to have a site that lots of people visit. But you have to start somewhere.

Directories:

Get listed in as many directories as possible. Make sure that the directory listing is relevant, otherwise your listing will not help your relevance.  Do not get into directories which list sites with which you do not want to be associated. There are directory submission services available which will manually submit your link to thousands of directories. Not all directories have much value. Directories that charge for listings are often ignored by Google. Some directories don't charge for listings, but they charge to review your submission for listing - this seems acceptable at the moment. The current wisdom is that listings in thousands of low-grade directories are not worth much to your page rank. However, if you have a new site with a low page rank, it will help.

The single easiest way for an optometry practice website site to get a good page rank is to get listed in the Open Directory Project - dmoz .  If you get into dmoz, then possibly you can achieve a page rank of 3 within a few months. This is because lots of other directories copy the dmoz listings. You may find that a lot of directories include all dmoz litings and then they charge to review other listings for inclusion. Therefore, if you are in dmoz, you may not need to submit to directories manually.

Google gives dmoz listed sites higher page ranks because they have been reviewed by a human and are therefore real sites. It can take 2 years to get into dmoz - if you get in at all.

Your site is not likely to get into dmoz if it has little useful and unique content, if it has only one page, or if it has broken links. Of course every case is different and different editors may have different interpretations of what constitutes a useful site.  An individual optometry practice site is taken to be unique just by being the site of an individual business.

Large organizations with lots of resources can get better page ranks without bothering with dmoz, but for an independent optometry practice, you cannot beat dmoz for results compared to the small amount of work involved.

If you don't have a meta description tag then the description given to your site by the dmoz editor is often included in the description that appears in the Google search results. This is not always a good thing as dmoz descriptions are objective descriptions of what your site contains, they will not be advertising your business. It is possible to tell Google through your webmasters account to stop using the dmoz description. Having a META description tag will usually allow you to control what description is shown in Google, even if you are listed in dmoz.

Another useful directory is the Yahoo directory. It costs $300 for business sites to get reviewed for listing, but it may help with ranking also. (Business listing into the Yahoo directory must be done through the US Yahoo site.)  Even if the Yahoo directory doesn't help with rankings, it will help with credibility. Sites are reviewed by an editor before being accepted into the Yahoo directory. This means that your category is correct and that your site is a real site. The advantage over dmoz is that you get in within one week if you pay the fee. It may be valuable to pay to get into the Yahoo directory if you have a new site and you are not showing up as expected on searches. The description given to your site by the Yahoo editors may show up in Yahoo search results.

New sites should not get into too many directories too quickly as this could get them penalized by search engines. "Too many" means getting into hundreds of directories straight away.  Beware of too many links from sites which are irrelevant to your site. This could get you penalized - especially if you have a new site.

Realistically, internet users don't use these directories, so they are purely for page rank building. It is likely that Google does not place much value on directory listings.  Dmoz is given special credibility because it is a way for Google to filter real sites from well optimized, machine generated marketing sites.

Exchange Links:

Exchange links with other sites: When sites link to each other this is called reciprocal linking. Create a "Links" page which can be viewed with one click from your home page. On this page you can link to other sites. The link needs to contain a short description of the other site - not just the link. Make sure you advise the other site of the text that they should use in their link to you.  Sharing links will not get you a high page rank. But just to get started it is good. You can possibly get a page rank of 2 just by sharing links. Do not link to sites if they do not link back. Check that the link from the other site is a proper link, and that it doesn't have a "no follow" tag in the link coding or the page header, and that the page is not marked as "no-follow" in the robots.txt file. Firefox browser has a plug-in that shows if a link is a real link. There should not be more than 50 links on any one page. Often webmasters try to hide the word links from search engines by calling them resources or other such words.

Link Exchange: These are sites where website owners exchange links.

Tri-links: a linking system where people get together to make their links look non-reciprocal.  eg. A links to B, B links to C, and C links to A. I don't know whether search engines have worked out how to crack this system to count it as reciprocal linking.

Link Farms: avoid including your link in a link farm. A link farm is a large list of links, usually with no description for each link. Link pages should not have more than 50 links per page and each link should have a description. Do not link to link farms from your site.

Having a link to your site from a "bad neighbourhood" probably will not hurt your site, as long as you have lots of good links too. If putting a link in a bad directory could damage a site's ranking, then people could do this to their competitors.

Check every outbound link regularly to make sure they are all still good. If your outbound links link to unreputable sites or become broken then this will hurt your page rank. Make sure the sites you link to have not changed.

Blogs and Forums:

This is an inefficient technique but it may help;

Get your web address into blogs and forums. However, this is considered spam and frowned upon in lots of places. Most blogging software automatically puts no-follow tags onto new links, but they become real links after a few months if they haven't been removed by the blog owner. Forums usually have no-follow links to prevent spamming as well. However, having your URL associated with your profile is usually permitted, and sometimes it is permitted to have it in your signature as well. This will give your site exposure, if not page rank.

Links marked no-follow still count towards your page rank in some way. Rather than classifying them as a link to your site, Google classifies them as a site where your site was discussed. Instead of spamming your site in a forum, you can contribute to the discussion, but have your URL shown in the signature. This is tolerated on lots of forums. Some forums only tolerate this if you are a financially contributing member.

Press Release and Content Upload Sites:

There are some sites which are under construction and have no content yet they have a page rank of 4 on their home page, and ranks of 3 or 4 on internal pages. Clearly this is not due to their content or to real links. Possibly they use presss release sites and content upload sites to get links. This must be the current way to build a good page rank quickly. This technique is not widely discussed on other sites, therefore it may be either very effective or very ineffective. It is likely that no-one wants to give away information that will help the competition.

Create other Websites and Blog Accounts:

Not highly recommended but you could create other sites which link to you - be careful with this. Make sure the other site is not a mirror of your first site. It may be better to host it on a different server to the main site. If the other site has no page rank then this will not help you much.

Create blogs and social networking site profiles which link to you. Again, the page rank of the blog counts, so if you have lots of blogs with no page rank that nobody visits then this isn't going to help you much.

Google values Blogs and "How to..."  "What is..."  websites, as they assume these are useful to people performing searches.

Get Articles Published:

Get articles into newspapers and magazines which are online, as they will be indexed by search engines.

Video Sites

It seems trendy at the moment for search engine optimization professionals to post promotional videos onto sites such a youTube. The purpose must be to help the search engine results of a website. Perhaps the number of views of a video counts towards page rank, or it is easier to get a a result  on the first page of Google with a video. There must be some benefit to using videos.

SEO Professionals:

SEO Professionals such as First Rate and StewArt Media perform the following functions;

Keyword Analysis
Competition analysis
Landing Page Design - sometimes they will create a separate landing page for each search phrase.
Copywriting and HTML coding - edit the site to include keywords and phrases and make the site SEO friendly.
Internal Link Analysis and Design
Directory Submission

The fact that there is a market for SEO professionals shows the poor knowledge of web designers.

Sometimes it is when commissioning SEO professionals that business owners realize who really owns their site. The webdesigner may not allow the SEO professional to modify the site, as the original webdesigner owns the intellectual property.  This has actually happened.  Beware of who actually owns the site. Make sure you own the copyright..

All SEO work can be done by the website owner as there is little technical knowledge required, the reason you would pay a professional is for expert knowledge that is likely to get results. For competitive categories SEO professionals are a good idea. For sites such as optometry practice websites it seems to be overkill.

Beware of SEO professionals who promise to get a good ranking for a non-competitive tern which no-one will search for. Use the tools in Adwords to get an idea of which words are actually used in searches.

SEO is not Search Engine Marketing or Pay-Per-Click Advertising

A lot of marketing companies use the term SEO interchangeably with marketing and advertising.  Some businesses offering  search engine optimization services may actually be offering pay-per-click advertising.

Be Careful of SEO Companies which do not improve your site.

There have been articles published about SEO companies which get traffic to their own site and then redirect it to their client's site.  The problem is that they are making the client dependent on their services. The client does not improve their page rank, nor do they help the client to generate traffic through their own site. If the client stops paying, the traffic stops. 




Hopefully this page is a useful overview of the principles of search engine optimization. People can read such information and then ignore it because it doesn't suit their site design ideals, or because others are not doing it. This makes things easier for those that optimize correctly.

It is common for webmasters to read such information and then pick a few of the points that they will actually do.  To do it properly, you need to follow most of the 13 points in the SEO section of this page.  Doing only some of these things will not get the same results.

This information is only a summary and webmasters must take responsibility for the consequences of over-optimizing.  Keep in mind that content is rewarded by search engines, and the information on this page is merely advice on how to tell the search engines about your content.


copyright 2008  Anthony Liska


A useful site for optimization tools is Webconfs

Detailed articles are contained on Website Helpers

Detailed page rank information is located here:  http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/google-ranking-factors.htm  

Keep in mind that search engine criteria change regularly, and only the search engines know what is good and bad.

The general principle is to tell the search engine what the site is about and to make sure your site is really about that topic.



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