Search Engine Optimization Ranking Tips

Search Engine Criteria

The first thing that you need to know is that most of the major search engines utilize an algorithm to determine where a website ranks. The search engines have setup specific criteria that a website must meet to get to the top of the list. The criteria are different for every engine, but all engines share several commonalities. It all boils down to the type and amount of content provided on a given website, the level of optimization done on the site, and the popularity of the website (link popularity/PageRank). Below we examine these commonalities in more detail.

Understanding Keywords and Search Behavior

In order to rank a website, you must first identify and understand your target audience. Keywords can tell you a lot about the type of user that will be potentially visiting your website. Many times it is best to consult an optimization professional during this process. Most individuals can determine which keywords are best for their website, if they are using the right tools, which are readily available.

The difficult task if determining which keywords are most relevant, and realistic to optimize for. One must also determine which keywords to optimize for on the various pages. Search engine optimization is often referred to as "an art," and this is a perfect example of where it takes a professional's touch to achieve the best results. When competing for any keyword, you can be sure that there is anywhere from 100,000 to 100,000,000+ websites competing against you. Proper keyword targeting is crucial for a successful search engine marketing and optimization campaign.

Content

Again, thinking at the algorithm level, how do search engines rank websites? The answer is quite simple: Those who have superior content rule. The phrase "content is king" was born about 4 years ago, and it still holds true today. If you want to be relevant for specific keywords, than you need superior or at least highly competitive content. With that said if you want to rank for a slew of different keyword phrases, than realize that you require a slew of relevant content. On average, one can target between 3-5 like keyword phrases per page.

This is another example of where a search engine optimization professional can lend some expertise. An expert can help determine what content you need, when compared to the type of keywords that you want to target. We are one of many firms that offer this type of consulting.

Are you Optimized?

Now that you have determined the keyword you need to rank for, and you have the right amount of content in place, you need to optimize your website to stand out from the crowd. Regarding on-page scripting the search engines are really looking for 2 things: 1) keywords in the Meta and Title fields and 2) keywords in the body of your website.

Regarding Meta Tags there are 2 very important fields:

1) Title Tag - arguably the most important SEO tag for any website. Google, Fast/Alltheweb/Lycos, and Ask Jeeves support approx. 60 characters in the title, while Inktomi and Altavista allows for up to 110 characters in the title. It is important to target the most critical keywords in the Title. Every page should have a unique Title.

2) META Description Tag - also very important for every page on the site. Some engines do display the description defined, while others do not. All search engines do read the description tag, and do utilize the content found within in the ranking process. A good rule of thumb is to create descriptions that do not exceed 200-250 characters.

The META keyword Tag is essentially useless in today's SEO market, but is often times good to utilize as a placeholder for the keywords targeted. The other optimization element to keep in mind is body content. Search engines are looking for dense content, with the right amount of keyword density and/or keyword placement. Depending on the architecture of a specific website, one may consider various means of placing keywords within body content. Typically it is best to place body content within a viewable area of the website. However, some websites may be graphic intense or within frames, or flash. In this scenario you will need to place keywords in ALT Tags, or No-Script tags.

Keep in mind that if you are following the rules published at the various search engines, that you must provide relevant content at all times, and it is always best to show all content to users that you show search engines.

At the end of the day, you must provide spiders with the keywords you want to rank in a variety of places, including META tags, Title, ALT Tags, Body content, links, etc. Enlisting the help of a professional is often times the most economical means of accomplishing these various nuances.

Are you popular?

So now you have determined the right keywords on the right pages, you've created all of the necessary content; you've optimized all of the content to the best of your capabilities. Congratulations - you're now in the top 80 percentile (from an optimization standpoint) of the websites listed for the keywords you're trying to target. So how do you get a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd page listing? The answer is quite simple: You have to be the most popular too. That's right, it's a popularity contest. In other words, how many other websites know you (link to you), and how popular are they?

Paid Inclusion

Once your site if fully optimized you'll need to submit to the engines, or pay the engines to guarantee that you will be indexed into their database. Paid Inclusion doesn't mean better rankings, but it does mean you are guaranteed the chance to rank because you will be listed in the databases. Currently you can perform Paid Inclusion with Inktomi, Altavista, Fast Search/Alltheweb/Lycos, Altavista, and Ask Jeeves. We can provide Paid Inclusion services, and does incorporate Paid Inclusion into many of its Search Engine Optimization and Placement packages.

SEO Factors

Off-Site SEO

Keyword-focused anchor text from external links. No surprise here. Rated as very high importance.

External Link Popularity. Again, not something new. Link building is about quality in addition to quantity. I don't know any SEO that doesn't inherently understand this. Authority is a well-discussed topic and this result reinforces it. See Link building: How many links do I need from a while ago for more.

Diversity of link sources. This is something we talk a ton about at Hubshout. One of the reasons we favor widgets and badges is the large domain name footprint it creates in your inbound link constellation. Go here for more on the impact of link diversity on rankings.

Domain trust. Again, something we've written about a bunch. This got a High Importance rating, and we agree. One day I went nuts on this topic, see my take on trust for your website.


On-Site SEO

Substantive, unique content. Do we need to say it again. Content is king. If you have not understood this by now, hearing again probably won't help. But there it is in the data for you. Very High Importance. We can't stress this enough. We believe it is at the heart of the search engine algorithms as a mechanism for sorting out source websites from those that simply regurgitate the words of others. See more here.

Keyword use in the title tag. Duh. This is now in every NetworkSolutions seminar and every blog post ever written on SEO.

Keyword use as the first words of the title tag. This has always been my preference. Browse my blog posts.

Keyword use in the root domain name. I stand corrected on this one. Jay once argued with me that it was important about 4 months ago. I didn't believe him and ran a few experiments myself. Turns out my data suggests it is quite important, especially for exact match searches. The SEOMoz data supports this thesis - and Jay's instincts. Sorry man. I'm not always right, but I'm always willing to admit when I am wrong.

From here, the importance rating drops from the 60% to the 40's. In my opinion you can probably stop here if you need to know the most critical stuff. If you want to make sure you do everything possible under the sun to attract search engine attention, you should read the entire list.

Tips on Keyword Optimization

1.      Google penalizes sites that stuff keywords, not because of promoting immortality device like that of Alex Chiu. Don’t obviously stuff your posts with SEO keywords make it look as natural. There are natural ways to make them appear into your post. Use this knowledge only for good, never for evil.

2.      Use the words that users are typing in the search engine boxes in your blog posts. For example, type in lol cats in Google’s free Keyword Tool and it will show you synonyms for lol cats, like cat pictures, L.O.L, funny pics cats, funny pictures cats and LOL kittens.

3.      Use also the plural forms, not just singular.

4.      Don’t use common keyword misspellings, leave it to your readers in a very natural way. There are people who don’t care about the correct spelling of the words they type.

5.      Use categories that are good keywords like gadgets, hacks, how-to weblog, blog. This promotes usability and search engine optimization as well. But, don’t use irrelevant categories as it will not only harm usability but also your Google standing.

6.      Google don’t rely as much on meta description tag as they’re not seen by the users. Instead, it gives more weight on categories, sidebars, navigation menus on the side, the whole content of the page.

7.      It is advisable to use the keywords somewhere in the post.

8.      Do not repeat the same keywords within a line but you may use slight keyword variants or synonyms. Do not alter the content you send to googlebot. It’s cloaking and you will be kicked out of the Google index for a long long time. Write with the users and search engines in mind

Things and Tools to Consider When Analyzing Competitors

1. Identify Your Competitors

First thing to do is to identify your competitors. I find SimilarSites.com accurate and one of the most simplest tool to use.

It has a voting system for every result if it is similar or not and Similar Sites also gives you a view of what your competitors are good at: www.example.com is rank 1 in Word Press tutorial, 13 in Photoshop tutorial, 2 in web resources, etc.

2. Search Engine Ranking

It is important that you know Page Rank. Google ranks websites according to their popularity, and obviously it gives you an idea on how competitors use their resources effectively.

An alternative to Google Page Rank is SEOmoz.com. Free registration and you are good to go with their Trifecta Tool Report. They have their own ranking system which I fancy, reading “44% – Somewhat Important”. Better to top all rankings instead of just one, right? However, regular members can only run one report per day.

3. Traffic is good for business

Analyzing your competitors’ traffic gives you an idea on the number of visitors they get. Google Trends, Alexa, GetClicky are good tools to compare statistics, they let you see on what regions the website is doing great as well as what search terms prospect visitors might search for. It is also good to note competitors that are not doing well in order to avoid being like them, more like a grave example.

The next thing to know, after learning what websites have good traffic, is how effective their keywords and link building is.

4. Importance of Keywords

It all comes down to keywords, it tells search engines the content of your site. Wrong keyword means no traffic. A successful competitor knows full well what keywords to use to harvest visitors to their site.

A tool to see good keywords in your niche is SEOdigger.com.

It provides a list of domains with common keywords and shows the position of the site for the search query in Google and what among them brings more traffic. It gives you enough facility to compare several competitors’ performance in SEO.

There are many instances when a higher PR website is outmatched by those with lower PRs, this is due to careful manipulation and good use of keywords. Thankfully you can see what keywords your competitors are using and which of them has the biggest impact. That’s what I call handy.

I almost forgot to mention Google Wonder Wheel. It provides relevant terms of your search query of what is gaining popularity among searchers.

5. Backlinks

Backlinks do two things to help promote your site if done correctly. First it serves as a tunnel from a website to yours, if the referring website is of high standing the better. Second it boosts your keywords. Have I not said that it’s all about keywords?

Knowing who the promoters are of sites within your niche is like learning some of the enemy’s strategies. This may serve you well in terms of knowing what direction your link building should go. It will be a good thing if the website that links to your competitor will take interest in you as well. Remember that good competitors have good backlinks.

6. Social Networks

Facebook is aiming to be the web’s standard for everything you do online. With its Open Graph, websites will customize themselves based on their users’ interests through the Like button. Imagine logging in to Amazon and finding all of the things that interests you neatly arranged on their home page without even having to search for it. Just thinking about it makes me shiver! It is predicted that in the very near future, Facebook will be the one to drive more traffic on websites, the blood of e-commerce! And most likely other major networking sites will follow this lead.

Consider following your competitors on Twitter and subscribe to their newsletter and blog. You may also want to search Twitter and see what people are posting about your search query and know how they’re feeling about it.

Internet Marketing Tools

1. Header Checker Tool

This tool will check any web page's header tags. Use our header checker to find any page's status code to ensure that your URLs are returning the appropriate status codes and re-directs are working properly. A surprising number of indexing and ranking problems come from erroneous re-directs, so it's crucial to be sure all of the HTTP status codes are correct.

2. Search Combination Tool

This tool will generate all possible combinations of two separate lists of search phrases. Find new ways to promote your website and reach your audience, when you broaden your keyword horizons. Use these phrases to modify and create new content, as well as to optimize title tags, URL's and internal linking structure. For a new insight into your keyword prospects generate some new combinations to kick start the brainstorming process.

3. Keyword Density Analysis Tool

Enter in a page URL and this tool will tell you the keyword density of all the phrases on the page. Find out how strong of a keyword message your content is sending with the Keyword Density Analysis Tool. Get hard numbers on your content ratios to find out if you need more or have too much. Use this tool to ensure a solid balance of keywords within your content, and to match the right keywords to the right pages.

4. Spider Viewer

See your site how the spider sees it. This one stop glimpse of your site's most basic information can give you insight into minor adjustments which can have a major impact. Use this tool to evaluate your internal links, meta information and page content. By using precision in regards to these elements you can structure your site to reach its maximum potential.