If you’re serious about search engine optimization and prepared to invest some money into keyword analysis, you can open an account with a keyword research Web site like Wordtracker. Simply go to the Wordtracker home page and click the Sign Up link (see below).
Wordtracker offers a wide variety of tools and reports to help you narrow the list of which keywords you should focus on in your blog posts to maximize potential traffic.
Other options similar to Wordtracker include the ones at www.Wordze.com and www.KeywordDiscovery.com. Like Wordtracker, each of these sites requires paying a fee, but free trials are available so you can test drive-them before you pay anything out of your pocket.
Reddit (shown in the figure below) is a popular social bookmarking site known for its “no frills” appearance. To use Reddit, you create a free account and begin submitting content by clicking the Submit button on the Reddit site. As users vote content up and down, the most popular content makes it to the home page of Reddit and drives a lot of traffic to that blog or Web site. Reddit has a reputation of focusing on offbeat news and unique commentary on current news.
The BlogHer social networking site is unique in that its intended audience is women bloggers. BlogHer (shown below) offers a directory of female bloggers, advertising, forums, and conferences. Additionally, members can create their own blogs on BlogHer to share thoughts, ideas, and news so female bloggers can communicate, network, and grow.
The popular Friendster site is very similar to other popular social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn. Friendster (shown below), which is open to anyone over the age of 16, invites its more than 75 million members from around the world to connect, share information, and communicate in a common space. The site offers a variety of applications to users to customize their experiences, including a mobile application. The clean design of Friendster helps you easily find friends and try applications.
6. Keyword Proximity – some engines, such as Google, use the concept of “keyword proximity” as part of their ranking formulas. As suggested by the name, “keyword proximity” means the how close keywords are to each other. Put your keywords as close together as possible and make sure your sentences are clear.
Here’s an example:
- We have been selling blogging data products for over 3 years.
- We have been selling products for blogging for over 3 years.
In this case if someone should look for “blogging data products”, the first sentence will rank higher because its keywords are closer to each other.
7. Keyword Frequency – is a measure of the number of times keywords occur within a page’s text. It’s tied to the concept of keyword density. Search engines want to see more than one repetition of a keyword in your text to make sure it’s not an isolated case. The recommended repetition is 3-7 times.
8. Keyword Density – the final point on visible text is keyword density. Simply stated, keyword density is the number of occurrences of a keyword divided by the total word count. For this, I try to keep my initial density to between 1-7%. However, this number may have to change depending on the level of competition. Also, be warned that the text used in anchors <a href=”page.html”>this is your anchor text </a> affects your density. Don’t worry if your initial density is lower than that of your competitors as you will learn later in this article that there are many ways to affect your keyword density other than placing your keywords in your visible text.
9. Anchors and Links – anchor text is that portion of a hyperlink that is viewed by a user on a webpage (The Clickable text).The keywords in anchor text enhance the relevance of the target page pertaining to the keywords used. While the relevance of the page containing the anchor text is also enhanced to some degree (because of relevant keywords appearing on that page), the real gainer is the target page URL.
Use this knowledge to build the relevance of each page of your site, through optimized anchor text containing important keywords, relevant to the theme of such pages, from other pages of your site. The inclusion of important keywords in the anchor text can make a big difference in the final ranking of your site pages.
All search engines that matter, give significant weight to the anchor text on your pages.
For example, if your keywords phrase is “blogging” and you have a link with anchor text “Read all about blogging here” on a page , pointing to another page about blogging. The tendency is to link “here” to the anchor text content URL whereas the best way is to link “blogging”. You can also locate (or insert) important keyword phrases in your page’s natural text and link it to relevant target pages of your site. The target page’s name should include in it, if possible, your keywords. This is how a hyperlink code looks like:
< a href=”target-page.html”>blogging</a>
10. Frames , Java scripts, Flash – About frames: DON’T USE THEM; they are not spiderable from the search engines. Regarding Java scripts and Flash do not use them excessively. The reason for this is that spiders cannot read JavaScript (or Flash) and thus any link or text created by such JavaScript will not be counted in your indexing and will produce a lost opportunity.
11. Navigation – The navigation structure of your site is important because it is through your navigation that the search engine spiders are able to access all of your web site’s content. For sites with a small number of pages you should have every page of your site linked to every other page of your site. This can be done by having a left/right side menu or by putting a link to every other page on the bottom of your page. For sites with many pages it is advisable to include in directories the pages that are content related.
The title tag is one of the most important factors in achieving high rankings. A title tag is essentially an HTML code that creates the words that appear in the top bar of your Web browser. Usually, the Title Tag is the first element in the <Head> area of your site, followed by the Meta Description and the Meta Keywords Tags. These are the general rules you should follow when optimizing your title tag:
- Use in your title maximum 3 keyword phrases and 100 characters
- If possible , don’t use stop words like “a, and, or”
- Avoid spam: don’t repeat the same keyword in your title more than twice; it’s considered spam. Also, some engines penalize for using all CAPS.
2. Meta Description tag
The META description tag describes your site’s content, giving search engines’ spiders an accurate summary filled with multiple keywords. The META description tag should contain multiple keywords organized in a logical sentence.
- Place the keywords phrase at the beginning of your description to achieve the best possible ranking
- Many search engines use this to describe your site so make sure you not only repeat each of your keyword phrases (max 3) at least once but make this a true representation of the page that the visitor will be viewing, and try to keep it under 255 chars
3. The Meta Keywords Tag
The meta keywords tag allows you to provide additional text for crawler-based search engines to index along with your body copy. How does this help you? Well, for most major crawlers, it doesn’t. That’s because most crawlers now ignore the tag. The meta keywords tag is sometimes useful as a way to reinforce the terms you think a page is important for on the few crawlers that support it. For instance, if you had a page about blogging – AND you say the words blogging at various places in your body copy – then mentioning the words “blogging” in the meta keywords tag MIGHT help boost your page a bit higher for those words.
The meta keyword tag is also sometimes useful as a way to help your page come up for synonyms or unusual words that don’t appear on the page itself. For instance, let’s say you had a page all about blogging exercises. You never actually say the word “make money” on this page. By having the word in your meta keywords tag, then you may help increase the odds of coming up if someone searched for “make money blogging”. Of course you would greater increase the odds if you just used the word “make money” in the body copy of the page itself. You should include up to 25 words or phrases, with each word or phrase separated by commas.
Here is an example of what a simple basic header should look like:
<head> <title> Your page title here</title>
<meta name=”Description” content=”Your description here”>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”Only permutations of your keywords goes here”>
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=iso-8859-1″>
</head>
There are some times when more code is necessary in your header, for example ,when using JAVA scripts or CSS (cascade style sheet) ; in this case it is best to use external files for java and css with extensions .js and .css.
To call your JavaScript simply cut the JavaScript from the header <script> to </script> and save in a file called java.js and call it using this line of code:
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE=”JavaScript” SRC=”java.js”> </SCRIPT>
Similarly to call your css from and ext file use this line of code:
<link href=”css.css” rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css”>
Keep in mind that the header is the invisible part of your page.
4. Body text
This is what your surfers will actually see when coming to your site. There are many issues to consider when placing keywords in the text of your pages. Most search engines index the full text of each page, so it’s vital to place keywords throughout your text. However, each search engine uses different ranking algorithms.
These are general rules that everyone should follow: 1. Make sure your main page have your main keywords. It has a higher chance of being indexed than your other pages, and it will be the only page indexed by some engines. Some engines rank a page high if it has at least 100 words, so make that your minimum. Directories include pages based on the quality of their content, so make sure your pages aren’t simply lists of keywords. 2. The H1, H2…H6 tags are given special relevancy weight, and you should plan to integrate your keywords into your heading. You don’t have to go extreme, just use one H1 for your most important keyword and two H2’s – one for each of your secondary keyword phrases. 3. Bolding and italicizing your keywords at least once doesn’t hurt and actually gives you a very small boost (recommended, but don’t go bolding every keyword on the page) 4. When creating your content pages, keep the following four concepts in mind: Keyword prominence, proximity, density and frequency. 5. Keyword prominence – the best place to place keywords in the text is at the top of each page, preferably the main page. The closer your keywords are to the start of the page or the start of a sentence, the better. This concept is known as “keyword prominence.” You’ll frequently see it used to describe search engines’ algorithms. Some engines also say the bottom of the page should contain keywords as well. Here is an example how search engines see your page. You have a page with the following links at top: Blogging Data
and this heading : Make Money Blogging
Now, you think you did a best job with the keyword “blogging “at the top of your page. A search engine, however, sees your page this way: Blogging Data Make Money Blogging
Now your keyword placement doesn’t look as good as it did before. Try to place keyword-rich text at the very top of your page. If you are using images at the top of your page, make sure to include ALT tags, which are basically images’ descriptions. Always add ALT tags to your images to make sure search engines recognize all the content on your site. ALT tags filled with keywords can also be used to boost your keyword frequency and help you achieve better rankings.
In this step by step article you will learn how to transform dry, unformatted articles into more attractive and readable text.
Step 1: The wrong way to format articles
In this sample page you can see an article without any formatting. This article was copied and pasted into an html code. A visitor would probably close this page – and for good. But there are simple steps to take in order to improve your articles. Let’s begin!
Step 2: Breaking it down
The simplest thing you can do is to break it down into small paragraphs. This is applied below. If we compare the first page and the second – you immediately notice a huge difference. And visitors will too.
Step 3: Basic text formatting
The next step is text formatting. This involves working through the text and highlighting key phrases, product names or important points – therefore improving readability and the overall look of the article. You can do this by applying bold/italic/underline formatting in the desired places.
Another great thing about text formatting is that if you format important keywords and phrases, search engines can pick that up as indicators that this article is relevant to these keywords and can give you some extra points in their rankings.
Step 4: Inserting images and tabs
Step 5: Embedding links
In this final step we will insert links. We decided to hotlink only images but you can put links on any meaningful phrases in the text as long it makes sense.
A common mistake is to put text links only once, twice or usually at the top of the article – that is way too few, especially for longer articles. You should try to have a link at the beginning, in the middle and at the very end of the article. If a reader is interested from the first paragraph he can jump straight to the product site or he can take action in the middle or very often at the bottom.
The link at the bottom of article is very important. If your article was informative enough and generated interest then this is how the visitor can take action – following a link to the product page or moving to the next article to get more information on the subject.
These links must be noticeable with an inviting/eye-catching link text or picture or both, and a call to action (visit, click here, order, start now, get started etc).
Insert ALT tags for images relating to your keywords.
If your system allows it – mask your affiliate links. It can be done in several ways like using JavaScripts or PHP files or .htaccess files.
Make your text large enough so everybody can easily read it.
Add your own ideas and twists and think outside the box!
Ideally, you should be rewriting the whole article. The rewriting process takes about 10 minutes if all related materials are prepared. It is important to rewrite whole article as it literally guarantees that you will have the one and only copy of this material (technically) and probably by meaning which will ensure great benefits from visitors and search engines as well.
Step 1: Read the Article
Go through the article once so you have an idea of what it is about – this will help in rewriting it later.
Step 2: Change the Headline
Keywords always come first, but can you change the headline to add something more creative at the end? A headline must also be short to work well, so you’ll have to balance that too. Your best bet is to add a related keyword to the headline – for example, if the article is on antioxidant supplements add the words healthy or health into the headline. And make sure that it makes sense and isn’t gibberish.
Step 3: Add a subheading
The subhead, despite its notoriety in sales letters is actually quite useful in providing focused, relevant information about the article to the reader. If you can write a 1-2 line keyword-rich summary of the article, put it here.
Step 4: Rewrite the introduction paragraph
Just reword the intro paragraph and don’t worry about changing too much or too little. Think of a different way of putting across the same point.
Step 5: Create headings in your articles
Slice and Dice – break up your article into 2-3 sections, give them headings and rewrite the first few lines that go after each heading. Subheadings can be also useful when compelling one article out of 2 or more other articles.
Step 6: Create a list(s) in the middle
Slice and dice again – break up a paragraph or two and turn it into a list – whether it is of features, of symptoms, a checklist, etc.
Step 7: Rewrite the last paragraph
You’re almost done – go through the last paragraph (or the last two paragraphs if they are short) and rephrase them again. Follow the tips given in the previous section for what type of words to use, but basically as long as you stay on topic, use related keywords and paraphrase, that’s all there is to it.
Step 8: Create a call to action at the end of the article
For articles that are submitted to article directories, your intention is two-fold – you want to drive readers to your site, and you want the links from your submitted articles to help your site rank higher in the search engines. As such, it makes sense that the end of the article should contain some information about the author and his site as well as a direct link back to it.
Step 9: Add links
Use keywords in your article to link to sections of your website – specific articles, categories, etc. Do this so that when the article is picked up by the search engines (in the article directory), they will count these links as backlinks to your internal pages and your search engine rankings will improve as a result.
Step 10: Review
Take a couple of seconds to go through your rewrite – is the headline ok, does the subhead make sense, does the new article have a conversational flow to it. Make sure you haven’t missed out anything and that you’ve formatted things properly (links, images, lists, etc).
Quick Rewrites A quick rewrite should not take you more than a couple of minutes. Here’s what you could do:
• Rewrite the headline.
• Add related content to your article – whether it’s an image, some extra information or links to useful, related sites.
• Rewrite the first paragraph.
• Rewrite the last paragraph.
Doing this should take you no more than a couple of minutes, especially if you have already done your ‘related content’ research and put together all the content that you want to add. I recommend ‘collecting’ all related content before you start working on your articles.
However this method is less reliable for long term projects so rewrite wisely, insert also a line or two in paragraphs you haven’t rewritten.
Starting at the top of your index/home page something like this:
A heading tag that includes a keyword(s) or keyword phrases. A heading tag is bigger and bolder text than normal body text, so a search engine places more importance on it because you emphasize it.
Heading sizes range from h1 – h6 with h1 being the largest text. If you learn to use just a little Cascading Style Sheet code you can control the size of your headings. You could set an h1 sized heading to be only slightly larger than your normal text if you choose, and the search engine will still see it as an important heading.
Next would be an introduction that describes your main theme. This would include several of your top keywords and keyword phrases. Repeat your top 1 or 2 keywords several times, include other keyword search terms too, but make it read in sentences that makes sense to your visitors.
A second paragraph could be added that got more specific using other words related to “online education”.
Next you could put smaller heading.
Then you’d list the links to your pages, and ideally have a brief decision of each link using keywords and keyword phrases in the text.
Next you might include a closing, keyword laden paragraph. More is not necessarily better when it comes to keywords, at least after a certain point. Writing “online education” fifty times across your page would probably result in you being caught for trying to cheat. Ideally, somewhere from 3% – 20% of your page text would be keywords. The percentage changes often and is different at each search engine. The 3- 20 rule is a general guideline, and you can go higher if it makes sense and isn’t redundant.
Finally, you can list your secondary content of book reviews, humor, and links. Skip the descrip- tions if they aren’t necessary, or they may water down your theme too much. If you must include descriptions for these non-theme related links, keep them short and sweet. You also might include all the other site sections as simply a link to another index that lists them all. You could call it Entertainment, Miscellaneous, or whatever. These can be sub-indexes that can be optimized toward their own theme, which is the ideal way to go.
Now you’ve set the all important top of your page up with a strong theme. So far so good, but this isn’t the only way you can create a strong theme so don’t be compelled into following this exact formula. This was just an example to show you one way to set up a strong site theme. Use your imagination, you many come up with an even better way.
