Website Search engine optimization

Oct 14, 2010 by masoncarten in Webhosting Tutorials | Tags: None

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Marketing campaigns and optimising websites for search engines is a vast topic. There are many aspects to contemplate when heading out with the goal of improving your website’s visibility,traffic and ranking within all the search engines. In part one I will discuss the highly important topic of website keywords. In follow-up articles I will cover additional topics such as page ranking, pay-per-click advertising campaigns, the marketing techniques to avoid, and the latest analysis technologies including eye tracking software.

Choosing the proper keywords for a web site is an significant and informatory search task. In the process of improving your web site you’ll acquire a good deal about your industry and your competitors.

Keywords are one the primary factors that come into play in the algorithms exploited by major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Windows Live Search. If a net surfer is looking at for household decorating tips and types ‘home decorating’ into a search engine, it will search its database for websites that incorporate that set phrase and those single words.

Selecting the right keywords

If you are an proficient in your line of business, you know what your customers are looking for. Specifically, you know many of the words and phrases your customers would use to describe your products and services. Start with what you know.

Compile a list of phrases and keywords that best describe your business and products. If you have a home decorating business you may think of words like ‘interior design’ and ‘furnishings’. Sort your list so that the most common phrases are on the top of your list.

You will now want to cross-reference the list of keywords that you have compiled with other lists generated for your industry. This will bring out other keywords that you may not have thought of previously. I recommend using a popular web-based keyword research tool named Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com). Wordtracker helps identify additional keywords and phrases and offers a free trial of their service. It provides only a limited number of related words, but is still a great starting point. Probing for related keywords for ‘home decorating’ with Wordtracker produces a listing of keywords similar ‘home’, ‘decor’, ‘decorating’, ‘home decor’, ‘furniture’, ‘design’, ‘interior’, ‘interior decorating’, ‘art’, ‘wall’, and ‘fabric’.

Other keyword tools, which produce similar results, are also available. These will include, amongst others, the web based tools provided by Yahoo (Overture) , and Google.

After compiling and merging the various lists of keywords, you’ll be ready to move on to the next step.

Using the right keywords on your web site

Now that you have a good idea of which key words web surfers may type into search engines to find your business or products, you must ensure your website contains these important key words.

A strategy is mandatory when updating your web site to include the keywords in your list. Starting at the beginning of your list, you should review the keywords. Determine which of these key words would normally be present on your web site and which of these key words you probably wouldn’t use. Using your first list of key words, you should start reviewing the different sections of your web site.

Your selected keywords should be placed in various areas of your site with the proper frequency. Your website content should focus on making sense to your visitors, not fed with keywords that will hopefully improve your search positioning. Search engine algorithms can detect the over use of keywords, which can negatively affect your positioning. Let’s go ahead and look at different areas of your web site.

Website Title

Every web site has a title. This does not refer to a web site logo or a bold heading found on the top section of a web site. The website title is displayed in the web browser’s title bar. This is the area of the window located to the left of the window’s minimize, maximize, and close buttons. The web site title is also the information displayed in search results, which is in a larger font and underlined. The website title is the first thing that a web surfer sees when performing a search. Web surfers scan the search result web site titles to determine which web site will meet their search criteria. This is your first opportunity to grab their attention.

A web site title must contain as many of your key words as possible, while maintaining easy readability. This will do two things for you. First, the search engine will find your website in its database and display your website in their results. Second, the website title will catch the surfer’s interest as they see their search criteria matching your website title. Over-stuffing the website title with key words makes the title hard to read and may be seen as abuse by search engines spiders. The website title is updated by changing the text located between the opening and closing title tags, in the header of the HTML code (Page Title). The title length should be kept to handful of words. The web site description tags allows more room for describing your products and services.

Website Description

As with the web site title, the web site description should likewise comprise a mixture of keywords. Unlike the web site title, the web site description is non visible on any section of the web site itself. The description is the summary information you see in search engines results, displayed below the website title. The website description gives you a little more space to describe your website and your products and services. Again, be sure that your description is easily readable for your visitors, in order to attract them to click your site title. The website description can be updated by changing the text in the description meta tag, in the header of the HTML code ().

Website Keywords

Along with the title and description entries in the HTML code, there is also an area to define a set of keywords that you’d like to associate to the page. This is called the keyword meta tag. Keywords are entered as a comma separated list, as follows (). The industry consensus is that the keyword meta tag is currently of little or no use with today’s major search engines. However, search engines continue to recommend their usage.

Web site Content

Bringing us to the meat of our web site, so to speak. Our elect keywords should be used throughout the web site content where it makes common sense. Once more, over-stuffing page content with keywords so that the subject matter is unnatural can be detected by search engines. A beneficial exercise is to use the keywords to make the page subject matter more descriptive. For example, a pet store may sell a variety of pet foods. This can be written in a descriptive manner, such as, ‘dog food and cat food’, instead of using ‘dog and cat food’. In this example the keyword ‘food’ is used twice.

Headings and Hyperlinks

Special attention should be given to the usage of heading (This is a Heading) tags and anchor tags (click here). Keyword employment in page heading is more than valuable than keywords used in a paragraph of textual matter. The same can be said with anchor tags (a.k.a. hyperlinks). Using keywords as the clickable textual matter of a hyperlink is really valuable.

Keyword Denseness

Keyword density refers to the percentage of occurrences of your keywords compared to the other text on the web page. Keyword concentration tools such as Webconfs.com’s Keyword Density Checker (http://webconfs.com/keyword-density-checker.php) provides a visualization of the main theme or message on a chosen page. The tool determines the number of times each word is repeated on a page, which is a test of how you’ve done at inserting keywords to optimize the content. It is also a dependable representation of how search engines will see your web page. ‘More is better’ is not the most effective keyword density goal. Although the optimal keyword denseness is much debated, having some balance is decidedly in order. A density below 1% makes it difficult for a search engine to understand your main message, where a density over 5% will start to make the content appear unnatural. At this phase in web site optimisation, the page content can be continually edited while the keyword denseness is being re-checked. Continue this process until your keywords are among the words with the highest density.

Closing

Choosing the right keywords for your web site is a must. Website keyword optimization is not rocket science, but it must be implemented carefully. By using the correct keywords, not only will your site be positioned well in search results, but it will draw visitors to your website.

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