Wednesday, September 15, 2010

FREE SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION TIPS AND INFO #2

Search Engine Optimization Tips and Information, Improve Web site Ranking

Please leave me a comment a and tell me what you think.  HTML is on if you would like to place a link as well. Get free search engine optimization tips on how to get a better page rank on google.  The information is free, and great for beginners and noobs who have little or no familiarity with this type of material...check it out...it's all FREE!

                                                                             

  FREE SEO Information             Lesson #2                                       The Basics 

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It Has Great Stuff In It

The first thing you need to do is open this link and bookmark it.  Keep it open as you read this blog and all the others coming behind it to help with terms that are new to you.  This link is to a free SEO Glossary that is loaded with all the SEO definitions you will need to learn as we begin our mission to increase your knowledge of SEO... Visit SEO Glossary!

Next, words that are in Bold and Italicized in this Blog and all other blogs that follow in this course from this point on are words (that if you don't understand) their meaning you need to look up in the glossary for the definition.

Lets assume that you are completely new to Search Engine Optimization and want to know more about it. S.E.O. (Search Engine Optimization ) is an acronym. used to describe the process of creating and manipulating content and code on a website to improve the websites visibility and rankings on search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.

While seeking out information on S.E.O. to improve your knowledge please be advised that it isn't an exact science. There are some pretty impressive people on the Internet that you would think, with their ability to push a website forward in the rankings so quickly, that they have special powers, and a blueprint, but they don't. These guys just spend considerable time staying current on information on S.E.O., and monitoring, and tweaking their website(s) to find out what is working and isn't working to make the site go up or down in ranking.

You will also find that there is no set solution for any one search engine. What seems to work well on Yahoo, sometimes doesn't work as well on Google or vice versa. The one common factor that does seem to work equally well is one way back links. The thing to remember is this. Google and Yahoo is where you want to be for organic (natural listings) They are the big dogs on the block and most Internet traffic goes through them. Yes, the other engines do get traffic through them too (millions of visitors) but you always want to be paying specific attention to the two powerhouses when it comes to optimizing your site to gain the maximum amount of visibility for your efforts.

Be careful of the Ultimate Optimizer sites with the big promises. Some sites have ridiculous claims about being able to almost instantaneously get you ranked on page 1 in Google and Yahoo for Keywords and Keyword phrases. Keywords, or keyword phrases are the particular word or group of words a person uses (types) in the search box to find something on the Internet. These are a very important part of optimizing a site and play a critical role in your overall success. Unfortunately, there are some websites out there that claim to have a special relationship with Google or Yahoo, or a special code that they use to optimize your site with and get you on the first page if you contract them. The problem with this is that they very well might be able to optimize your sight with some content and code that will get you moved to the first page of the Major search engines. However, the keywords or keyword phrases that they will get you moved into a first rank position for are usually garbage and receive very little traffic.

Thus for the most part you are wasting your time, money and not improving the overall success of your website that much, and with a little education and time you can achieve the same rankings they offer.. Highly sought after keywords and keyword phrases are often extremely difficult to move your self into a first page position for. The most desirable keywords are so difficult to achieve at times because many of the top sites for those keywords (phrases) have very large budgets and can afford to expend a lot of money hiring very good people to keep them there.  But it isn't impossible as long as you remember that it won't happen overnight.

The task of getting a first place ranking for the most highly trafficked keywords is daunting at times but not impossible and you can compete with the big dogs in many instances. What I try to do initially is research some of the lower to mid-level trafficked keywords and phrases at first and optimize my site for them. That way you are not wasting your efforts going up against the big guys initially, and you have a better chance of improving your websites ranking. With some knowledge and practice you can do it too. But again I strongly caution you against believing some of the guru optimization sites that claim first page on google, and claim a special relationship with the Search engine companies. The search engines don't do that to the best of my knowledge. If anyone can prove otherwise please leave a comment, I would like to hear more about it.

Optimize Your Web Site Properly, Don't Just Think....LINK, LINK, LINK!

There are many elements to consider when optimizing a website. There is On-Website (On-Page) optimization; things you do to the web page (each page) to optimize it. There is Off-Website (off-page optimization) things you do to the website but off of the page to optimize the website. It is much too time consuming to address all of it in one blog so I will address an element of On Page optimization and an element of Off Page optimization in this blog issue.
On-page optimization by most people that are experienced at SEO is not where they are spending most of their time.  However, I don't completely agree with them on this particular issue. On site optimization is still very important (because it is the first optimization you do) although it is responsible for about only 30% to 35% of your over all ranking with the search engines.  On-site stuff includes your website meta-title, meta-description, and meta-keywords, that you want the search engines to index your website pages for.  Indexing is when the search engines spyder crawls you website pages for information like your meta-tags, and content, h1, h2, h3 tags, etc.  But it is my opinion that a properly optimized website will receive better rankings by far than one that isn't and concentrates solely on back links.  Think about it this way.  If your website is properly optimized "on site" and you have just about as many links as one that isn't, who do you think the search engine will favor?  Don't be deceived, back links are very important but proper on site optimization will go a long way with the search engines. 

If you don't believe me then just check some sites that rank well on googles first page.Then find a site that is say one or two places up in ranking but doesn't have half the back links.  How is it accomplishing this?  It is doing with proper on site optimization.  So don't allow your self to fall into the back link syndrome as I call it and neglect your on site optimization.

When placing the meta-tags on your website or if you are having your web designer do this make sure that the same ones aren't used for each page over and over.  One critical mistake that many people and/or web designers do is to add these to each page.  Each page of your website should be different from the home and have different content therefore the tags should be different per page as well.

Your h1, h2, etc, are you heading tags and carry a great deal of weight with the search engine so choosing the right content for this is critical.  You want these tags to have some keywords/keyword phrases you are trying to rank for embedded in them.  Truly,  before you ever even write the first word for your website or even choose your domain name you should seriously think about and research the keywords and keyword phrases that you want to rank well for in the search engines.  You can get starting searching out the good keywords for website by going to google adwords tool and signing up.  This way you can type in the keywords you want, learn of keywords you didn't know existed and get an idea of what type of keyword strategy you want to employ in order to write good content for your site.

When creating content for your website you want to find good keywords, not only the ones you want to use but also check those of the top ranking competitors for website.  They will have their website optimized well since they are in top ranking slots.  You want to reverse engineer these site as much as possible.  DON'T however, copy their content and use it for your own.  You will suffer what is known as a similar content penalty if you do.  Either you or your web designer can do this by going over to the right hand side of their web page, right clicking your mouse button and then clicking the view source.  this will enable you to view their web page html (hyper text markup language) and see what type of meta tags they are using, keyword, keyword phrases, etc.  A very good place to go to help you understand what you are looking at if you have never seen or heard of this before is the W3Schools for very good, very well explained information on html and other code languages.  Doing this type of stuff may seem mind boggling and time consuming but it is well worth its weight in gold and you will learn what this all means and the pieces will come together for you after a while.

Don't let this stuff intimidate you too much if it is all new to you.  It will eventually begin to make sense and the more you learn the better off you will in so many ways as you begin to promote a website on the Internet.  Take your time if you're new learn what you can and the pieces to the puzzle will unfold as we move on.  This will conclude this lesson and you can take some time to follow-up on the information provided in this tutorial.  Lesson 3 will be on it's way soon until then be well, be blessed,  keep learning and be careful of many of the false soothsayers on the internet.


Free SEO Book
Just email me @
for a completely free copy