SEO MARKETING BOOK

SEO

SEO is the science of customizing elements of your web site to achieve the best possible search engine ranking. That's really all there is to search engine optimization. But as simple as it sounds, don't let it fool you. Both internal and external elements of the site affect the way it's ranked in any given search engine, so all of these elements should be taken into consideration. Good SEO can be very difficult to achieve, and great SEO seems pretty well impossible at times.

But why is search engine optimization so important? Think of it this way. If you're standing in a crowd of a few hundred people and someone is looking for you, how will they find you? In a crowd that size, everyone blends together. Now suppose there is some system that separates groups of people. Maybe if you're a woman you're wearing green and if you're a man you're wearing grey. Now anyone looking for you will have to look through only half of the people in the crowd. You can further narrow the group of people to be searched by adding additional differentiators until you have a small enough group that a search query can be executed and the desired person can be easily found. Your web site is much like that one person in the huge crowd. In the larger picture your site is nearly invisible, even to the search engines that send crawlers out to catalog the Web. To get your site noticed, even by the crawlers, certain elements must stand out. And that's why you need search engine optimization. By accident your site will surely land in a search engine. And it's likely to rank within the first few thousand results. That's just not good enough. Being ranked on the ninth or tenth page of search results is tantamount to being invisible. To be noticed, your site should be ranked much higher. Ideally you want your site to be displayed somewhere on the first three pages of results. Most people won't look beyond the third page, if they get even that far. The fact is, it's the sites that fall on the first page of results that get the most traffic, and traffic is translated into revenue, which is the ultimate goal of search engine optimization. To achieve a high position in search results, your site must be more than simply recognizable by a search engine crawler. It must satisfy a set of criteria that not only gets the site cataloged, but can also get it cataloged above most (if not all) of the other sites that fall into that category or topic. Some of the criteria by which a search engine crawler determines to rank your site should have in a set of results include anchor text and site popularity. Other important criteria are as follows

· Link context

· Topical links

· Title tags

· Keywords

· Site language

· Content

· Site maturity

There are estimated to be at least several hundred other criteria that could also be examined before your site is ranked by a search engine. Some of the criteria listed also have multiple points of view. For example, when looking at link context, a crawler might take into consideration where the link is located on the page, what text surrounds it, and where it leads to or from. These criteria are also different in importance. For some search engines, links are more important than site maturity, and for others, links have little importance. These weights and measures are constantly changing, so even trying to guess what is most important at any given time is a pointless exercise. Just as you figure it out, the criteria will shift or change completely. By nature, many of the elements are likely to have some impact on yoursite ranking, even when you do nothing to improve them. However, without your attention, you're leaving the search ranking of your site to chance. That's like opening a business without putting out a sign. You're sure to get some traffic, but because people don't know you're there, it won't be anything more than the curiosity of passersby.

Seo goals

One of the greatest failings of many SEO plans, like all technology plans, is the lack of a clearly defined goal. The goal for your SEO plan should be built around your business needs, and it's not something every business requires. For example, if you run a simple blog, SEO might be more expense than it's worth. But if your plans for that blog are to turn it into a brand, then the simplest of SEO strategies might be just what you need to build the traffic that begins to establish your brand. If you have a larger business, say a web site that sells custom-made furniture, one way to increase your business (some estimate by more than 50 percent) is to invest time, money, and considerable effort into optimizing your site for search. Just don't do it without a goal in mind. In the case of the furniture website, one goal might be to increase the amount of traffic your web site receives. Another might be to increase your exposure to potential customers outside your geographic region.

Seo plan

For many people, the thought of implementing SEO on a web site that includes dozens or even hundreds of pages is overwhelming. It doesn't have to be, though.

Prioritizing pages

Look at SEO in small, bite-size pieces. For example, instead of looking at your site as a whole, look at each page on the site. Prioritize those pages, and then plan your SEO around each page's priority. Taking a single page into consideration helps to eliminate the "everything has to happen right now" issue and makes it possible for you to create an SEO plan that will maximize your web site's potential

in the minimum amount of time. Top priority pages should be the ones that your visitors will most naturally gravitate to, such as your home page, or pages that will generate the most in terms of traffic or revenue. When prioritizing pages, you're also creating a roadmap for your marketing efforts. If three of the pages on your site are your top priority, those three will have the lion's share of time, capital, and effort when it comes to SEO and marketing.

Site assessment

After you have prioritized your site, you should assess where you stand and where you need to be with your current SEO efforts. Again, assess each page individually, rather than the site as a whole. In SEO, individual pages are equally important (if not more so) than the entire site. All of your efforts are designed to rank one page above all others in search results. Which page is the most important should be determined by your business needs. Your SEO assessment should be a document that outlines the current standing of the main SEO elements of each page. It should contain columns for the element of the site you're assessing, the current status of that element, what needs to be improved in that element, and the deadline for improvement. It's also helpful if you have a check box next to each item that can be marked when improvements are completed and a column for follow-up, because SEO is a never-ending process. The elements that should be considered during an assessment include:

· Site/page tagging: The meta tags that are included in the coding of your web site are essential to having that site listed properly in a search engine. Tags to which you should pay specific attention are the title tags and description tags, because these are the most important to a search engine.

· Page content: How fresh is your content? How relevant is it? How often is it updated? And how much content is there? Content is still important when it comes to search results. After All, most people are looking for a specific piece of content, whether it's information or a product. If your content is stale, search engines could eventually begin to ignore your site in favor of a site that has fresher content. There are exceptions to this generalization, however. And one exception is if your content is, by nature, very rich but not very dynamic. Because of the usefulness of the content, your site will probably continue to rank well. But it's a difficult case to determine. In most cases, fresh content is better.

· Site links: Site links are essential in SEO. Crawlers and spiders look for the links into and out of your site in order to traverse your site and collect data on each URL. However, they also look for those links to be in-context, meaning the link must come from or lead to a site that is relevant to the page that is being indexed. Broken links tend to be a large problem when it comes to search engine ranking, so be sure to check that links are still working during the assessment process.

· Site map: Believe it or not, a site map will help your web site be more accurately linked. But this is not the ordinary site map that you include to help users quickly navigate through your site. This site map is an XML-based document, at the root of your HTML, which contains information (URL, last updated, relevance to surrounding pages, and so on), about each of the pages within a site. Using this XML site map will help to ensure that even the deep pages within your site are indexed by search engines. If you don't have a site map, you should create one. If you do have one, make sure it's accurate and up to date.

Finishing the plan

With the site assessment out of the way, you should have a good idea of what areas need work and what areas are in good shape. Don't assume the areas that don't currently need work will always be perfect, however. That's not how it works. At the least, changes to the pages will require changes to the SEO efforts that you're putting forth; at most they may require that you begin SEO efforts for that page all over again. You can now take the time to put together all of the information that you've gathered into a cohesive picture of the SEO efforts you should be making. Your SEO plan is more than just a picture of what's there and what's not, however. This is the document that you use to tie everything together: current standing, marketing efforts, capital expenditures and time frames all of it. The document should look much like any other plan that you'll create, for instance your business plan. In this plan, you should have an area for background information, marketing information, plans for growing the business, and plans for managing problems that may arise. An SEO plan is very similar. You'll have your current standings, the goals that you plan to hit, and the marketing efforts that you plan to make for each page (or for the site as a whole). You'll even have the capital expenditures that you plan to encounter as you implement your SEO plan. You'll also want to include the strategies you plan to use. Those strategies can be efforts such as submitting your site or pages from your site to directories manually and planning the content you'll use to draw search crawlers, or they can be keyword marketing plans or pay-per-click programs you plan to use. Also be sure to include a time line for the testing and implementation of those efforts as well as for regular follow-ups.

Web-site content

Web-site content is one of the most highly debated elements in search engine optimization, mostly because many rather unethical SEO users have turned to black-hat SEO techniques, such as keyword stuffing to try to artificially improve search engine ranking. Despite these less-than-honest approaches to search engine optimization, however, web-site content is still an important part of any web-site optimization strategy. The content on your site is the main draw for visitors. Whether your site sells products or simply provides information about services, what bring visitors to your site are the words on the page. Product descriptions, articles, blog entries, and even advertisements are all scanned by spiders and crawlers as they work to index the Web. One strategy of these crawlers and spiders is to examine just how the content of your page works with all of the other elements (like links and meta tags) that are examined.

To rank high in a selection of search results, your content must be relevant to those other elements. Some search engines will de-list your page or lower your page rank if the content of your site is not unique. Especially since the advent of blogs, search engines now are examining how frequently the content on pages is updated and looking for content that appears only on your web site. This doesn't mean you can't have static content on your page. For e-commerce sites, the product descriptions may rarely change. But including other elements on the page, like reviews or product updates, will satisfy a crawler's requirement that content change regularly.

Content is an important part of your site and the ranking of your site in search engine results. To achieve organic SEO, take the time to develop a content plan that not only outlines what should be included on each page of your site, but also how often that content will be updated, and who will do the updates. One other element you might want to consider when looking at your page content as part of SEO is the keywords that you plan to use. Ideally, your chosen words should appear on the page several times. But again, this is a balancing act that might take some time to accomplish Keywords are part of your site content, and as such require special attention. In fact, the selection of the right keywords is a bit of an art form that takes some time to master. For example, if your web site is dedicated to selling products for show dogs, you might assume that "show dogs" would be a perfect keyword. You might be wrong. Selecting the right keywords requires a good understanding of your audience and what they might be looking for when they want to find your web site. People looking for products for show dogs could search for "grooming products," "pedigree training," or just "dog supplies." It could even be something entirely different, like the name of a product that was featured at the most recent dog show. Learning which keyword will be most effective for your site will require that you study your audience, but it also requires some trial and error. Try using different keywords each quarter to learn which ones work the best. It's also advised that you use a tracking program such as Google Analytics to monitor your web site traffic and to track the keywords that most often lead users to your site. We can use Google Trends which provides insights into broad search patterns. It also shows the usage of search terms in each regions, cities etc.,

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free web site statistics application that you can use to track your web site traffic. You can access Google Analytics by going to http://www.google.com/analytics. You are required to have a Google user name to access the program. Google Analytics can track visitors from all referrers, including search engines, display advertising, pay-per-click networks, email marketing and digital collateral such as links within PDF documents. Google Analytics approach is to show high level dashboard-type data for the casual user, and more in-depth data further into the report set. Through the use of Google Analytics analysis, poor performing pages can be identified using techniques such as funnel visualization, where visitors came from, how long they stayed and their geographical position. It also provides more advanced features, including custom visitor segmentation.

Stat counter

One of the similar tools to Google Analytics is StatCounter. This service can be obtained from www.statcounter.com. StatCounter is an invisible web tracker, highly configurable hit counter and real-time detailed web stats. You can analyse and monitor all the visitors to your website in real-time.

Internal and external links

Another element of organic SEO that's just as important as your web-site content is the links on your pages. Links can be incoming, outgoing, or internal. And where those links lead or come from is as important as the context in which the links are provided. When links first became a criteria by which crawlers ranked web sites, many black-hat SEO users rushed to create link farms. These were pages full of nothing but web links, some of which led to relevant information and some of which led to sites in no way related to the topic of the web site. It didn't take long for search engine designers and programmers to catch on to these shady practices and change the way that crawlers use links to rank sites.

Today, links must usually be related to the content of the page, and they must link to something relevant to that content. In other words, if your links don't go to or lead in from pages that match the keywords that you're using, they will be of little value to you. The balance of links that are included on your page is also relevant. Too many links and your site could be labeled as a link farm. Too few and you'll lose out to sites that have more and better-targeted links. Your best option when including links on your web site is to link to the pages you know for sure are relevant to your site content. Don't include a link unless you're sure it will have value to your users, and then take the time to pursue links into your site from them as well. One other type of link, the internal link, is also important. This is a navigational link that leads users from one page to another on your site. The navigation of your site (which is what these links are, essentially) should be intuitive, and natural in progression. And you should also include a site map.

The Importance of Keywords

Basically, keywords capture the essence of your web site. Keywords are what a potential visitor to your site puts into a search engine to find web sites related to a specific subject, and the keywords that you choose will be used throughout your optimization process. As a small-business owner, you will want your web site to be readily visible when those search engine results come back. Using the correct keywords in your web-site content can mean the difference in whether you come back in search engine results as one of the first 20 web sites (which is optimum) or buried under other web sites several pages into the results (which means hundreds of results were returned before your site). Studies show that searchers rarely go past the second page of search results when looking for something online. Take into consideration for a moment the telephone book Yellow Pages. Say you're looking for a restaurant. The first thing you're going to do is find the heading restaurant, which would be your keyword. Unfortunately, even in a smaller city, there might be a page or more of restaurants to look through. However, if you narrow your search to Chinese restaurants, that's going to cut in half your time searching for just the right one. Basically, that's how keywords work in search engines and search engine optimization. Choosing the appropriate keywords for your web site will improve your search engine rankings and lead more search engine users to your site.

How do you know which keywords to use? Where do you find them? How do you use them? The answer to these questions will save you a great deal of time when creating a web site. Where you rank in search engine results will be determined by what keywords are used and how they are positioned on your web site. It's critical to choose appropriate keywords, include variations of those keywords, avoid common (or "stop") words, and know where and how many times to place them throughout your web site. Used correctly, keywords will allow you to be placed in the first page or two of the most popular search engines. This tremendously increases the traffic that visits your web site. Keep in mind, the majority of Internet users find new web sites through use of a search engine. High search engine rankings can be as effective, if not more effective, than paid ads for publicity of your business. The business you receive from search engine rankings will also be more targeted to your services than it would be with a blanket ad. By using the right keywords, your customer base will consist of people who set out to find exactly what your site has to offer, and those customers will be more likely to visit you repeatedly in the future.

To decide which keywords should be used on your web site, you can start by asking yourself the most simple, but relevant, question. Who needs the services that you offer? It's an elementary question, but one that will be most important in searching for the correct keywords and having the best search engine optimization. If you're marketing specialty soaps, you will want to use words such as soap (which really is too broad a term), specialty soap, bath products, luxury bath products, or other such words that come to mind when you think of your product. It's also important to remember to use words that real people use when talking about your products. For example, using the term "cleaning supplies" as a keyword will probably not result in a good ranking because people thinking of personal cleanliness don't search for "cleaning supplies." They search for "soap" or something even more specific, like "chamomile soap." In addition to the terms that you think of, people also will look for web sites using variations of words and phrases including misspellings. It might help to have friends and family members make suggestions of what wording they would use to find a similar product and include those words in your keyword research as well as misspellings of those words. An example might be "chamomile." Some people may incorrectly spell it "chammomile," so including that spelling in your keywords can increase your chance of reaching those searchers. Also remember to use capitalized and plural keywords. The more specific the words are, the better the chance will be that your web site is targeted. Just remember that words such as "a," "an," "the," "and," "or," and "but" are called stop words. These words are so common they are of no use as keywords

Using Anchor Text

Anchor text the linked text that is often included on web sites is another of those keyword anomalies that you should understand. Anchor text usually appears as an underlined or alternately colored word (usually blue) on a web page that links to another page, either inside the same web site or on a different web site What's important about anchor text is that it allows you to get double mileage from your keywords. When a search engine crawler reads the anchor text on your site, it sees the links that are embedded in the text. Those links tell the crawler what your site is all about. So, if you're using your keywords in your anchor text (and you should be), you're going to be hitting both the keyword ranking and the anchor text ranking for the keywords that you've selected. Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule. In fact, everything in SEO has these, and with anchor text the exception is that you can over-optimize your site, which might cause search engines to reduce your ranking or even block you from the search results altogether. Over-optimization occurs when all the anchor text on your web site is exactly the same as your keywords, but there is no variation or use of related terminology in the anchor text.

Sometimes, web-site owners will intentionally include only a word or a phrase in all their anchor text with the specific intent of ranking high on a Google search. It's usually an obscure word or phrase that not everyone is using, and ranking highly gives them the ability to say they rank number one for whatever topic their site covers. It's not really true, but it's also not really a lie. This is called Google bombing. However, Google has caught on to this practice and has introduced a new algorithm that reduces the number of false rankings that are accomplished by using anchor text in this way.

The other half of anchor text is the links that are actually embedded in the keywords and phrases used on the web page. Those links are equally as important as the text to which they are anchored. The crawler will follow the links as part of crawling your site. If they lead to related web sites, your ranking will be higher than if the links lead to completely unrelated web sites. These links can also lead to other pages within your own web site, as you may have seen anchor text in blog entries do. The blog writer uses anchor text, containing keywords, to link back to previous posts or articles elsewhere on the site. And one other place that you may find anchor text is in your site map. Naming your pages using keywords when possible will help improve your site rankings. Then to have those page names (which are keywords) on your site map is another way to boost your rankings and thus your traffic remember that a site map is a representation of your site with each page listed as a name, linked to that page. Anchor text seems completely unrelated to keywords, but in truth, it's very closely related. When used properly in combination with your keywords, your anchor text can help you achieve a much higher search engine ranking

Picking the Right Keywords

Keywords are really the cornerstone of any SEO program. Your keywords play a large part in determining where in search rankings you'll land, and they also mean the difference between a user's finding your page and not. So when you're picking keywords, you want to be sure that you've selected the right ones. The only problem is, how do you know what's right and what's not? Selecting the right keywords for your site means the difference between being a nobody on the Web, and being the first site that users click to when they perform a search. You'll be looking at two typesof keywords. The first is brand keywords. These are keywords associated with your brand. It seems pretty obvious that these keywords are important; however, many people don't think they need to pay attention to these keywords, because they're already tied to the site. Not true. Brand keywords are just as essential as the second type, generic keywords. Generic keywords are all the other keywords that are not directly associated with your company brand. So if your web site, TeenFashions.com, sells teen clothing, then keywords such as clothing, tank tops, cargo pants, and bathing suits might be generic keywords that you could use on your site.

What's the Right Keyword Density?

Keyword density is hard to quantify. It's a measurement of the number of times that your keywords appear on the page, versus the number of words on a page a ratio, in other words. So if you have a single web page that has 1,000 words of text and your keyword appears on that page 10 times (assuming a single keyword, not a keyword phrase), then your keyword density is 1 percent. What's the right keyword density? That's a question that no one has been able to answer definitively. Some experts say that your keyword density should be around five to seven percent, and others suggest that it should be a higher or lower percentage. But no one seems to agree on exactly where it should be. Because there's no hard and fast rule, or even a good rule of thumb, to dictate keyword density, site owners are flying on their own. What is certain is that using a keyword or set of keywords or phrases too often begins to look like keyword stuffing to a search engine, and that can negatively impact the ranking of your site. See, there you are. Not enough keyword density and your site ranking suffers. Too much keyword density and your site ranking suffers. But you can at least find out what keyword density your competition is using by looking at the source code for their pages.

Taking Advantage of Organic Keywords

Organic keywords are those that appear naturally on your web site and contribute to the search engine ranking of the page. By taking advantage of those organic keywords, you can improve your site rankings without putting out additional budget dollars. The problem, however, is that gaining organic ranking alone can take four to six months or longer. To help speed the time it takes to achieve good rankings, many organizations (or individuals) will use organic keywords in addition to some type of PPC (pay per click) or pay for inclusion service.

To take advantage of organic keywords, you first need to know what those keywords are. One way to find out is to us a web-site metric application, like the one that Google provides. Some of these services track the keywords that push users to your site. When viewing the reports associated with keywords, you can quickly see how your PPC keywords draw traffic, and also what keywords in which you're not investing still draw traffic. Another way to discover what could possibly be organic keywords is to consider the words that would be associated with your web site, product, or business name. For example, a writer might include various keywords about the area in which she specializes, but one keyword she won't necessarily want to purchase is the word "writer," which should be naturally occurring on the site.

The word won't necessarily garner high traffic for you, but when that word is combined with more specific keywords, perhaps keywords that you acquire through a PPC service, the organic words can help to push traffic to your site. Going back to our writer example, if the writer specializes in writing about AJAX, the word writer might be an organic keyword, and AJAX might be a keyword that the writer bids for in a PPC service. Now, when potential visitors use a search engine to search for AJAX writer, the writer's site has a better chance of being listed higher in the results rankings. Of course, by using more specific terms related to AJAX in addition to "writer," the chance is pretty good that the organic keyword combined with the PPC keywords will improve search rankings. So when you consider organic keywords, think of words that you might not be willing to spend your budget on, but that could help improve your search rankings, either alone or when combined with keywords that you are willing to invest in.

Avoid Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is the practice of loading your web pages with keywords in an effort to artificially improve your ranking in search engine results. Depending on the page that you're trying to stuff, this could mean that you use a specific keyword or keyphrase a dozen times or hundreds of times. Temporarily, this might improve your page ranking. However, if it does, the improvement won't last, because when the search engine crawler examines your site, it will find the multiple keyword uses. Because search engine crawlers use an algorithm to determine if a keyword is used a reasonable number of times on your site, it will discover very quickly that your site can't support the number of times you've used that keyword or keyphrase. The result will be that your site is either dropped deeper into the ranking or (and this is what happens in most cases), it will be removed completely from search engine rankings.

Keyword stuffing is one more black-hat SEO technique that you should avoid. To keep from inadvertently crossing the keyword stuffing line, you'll need to do your "due diligence" when researching your keywords. And you'll have to use caution when placing keywords on your web site or in the meta tagging of your site. Use your keywords only the number of times that it's absolutely essential. And if it's not essential, don't use the word or phrase simply as a tactic to increase your rankings. Don't be tempted. The result of that temptation could be the exact opposite of what you're trying to achieve.

Choosing Effective Keywords

When you're using keyword marketing to optimize your site, you can run into a lot of frustrating situations. Despite your best efforts, it's possible that the keywords you select are just not generating the traffic that you need. On the other hand, sometimes keywords that work well in the beginning will just stop working. You can tell when this happens because the numbers associated with your keywords (assuming you're using a metrics program to track them) drop without warning or explanation.

Many things can happen to make your keywords quit being as effective as they were in the past. And many times you didn't do anything at all to make this happen. That's why it's essential to regularly develop concepts, test, and implement new keywords for your PPC programs and for your web site.

Creating your first keyword list

The initial idea of keyword research can be daunting. Trying to come up with the perfect combination of words to drive customers to your site, improve your conversion rate, and make yourself visible to search engines could easily give you a serious tension headache. It's not something that you can just jump into today and be successful at before the sun sets. It's far more successful if you start slowly and build your way to greater success. You already know that you must first create a list of potential keywords. Brainstorming and asking customers are two ways to build that list. You can also include all of the keywords that are suggested by keyword suggestion tools, and you might even consider pulling out a thesaurus to find additional words and phrases that you haven't considered. Come up with enough words to cover all the services your site offers and avoid broad or generic terms that are so all-encompassing they apply to every site that's even remotely related to yours. These words are incredibly difficult to rank high with and won't drive quality traffic to your site. Instead, focus on words that are relevant but not overly used, and always keep your eyes open for those words that are very specific but highly targeted to your site or offerings.

When creating your first keyword list, include all of the words that you can come up with. This part of selecting your keywords and phrases is actually easy. You can include everything and don't have to worry about the quality of what you're including until later. Unfortunately, because it is so easy to create this first list, many people make the assumption that PPC marketing is easy. This first step may be, but it does get much harder as you research and qualify words and phrases and then work those words and phrases into PPC marketing programs. Keywords and phrases will need constant revision, so you should always be creating that "first" keyword list. Keep a running list of words that will apply to your site. Each time something is changed on the site, or something changes in the field that you're in, you'll have to go through all of these steps again. If you are not constantly testing, analyzing, adding to, and removing nonperforming keywords and phrases as appropriate, you'll find that PPC programs that worked really well in the beginning lose effectiveness over time.

You'd better believe that your competition will be constantly monitoring and revising their keyword and PPC strategies. And if you're not regularly taking advantage of all your keyword resources, you might as well hand over your customer lists to your competition, because they're going to end up with all of your customers anyway.

Keywords are what draw potential customers to your web site. These potential customers are either visitors who are ready to buy now or they're browsers whom you can motivate into making a purchase or reaching a goal conversion that you've established. So remember that when you're building your initial keyword list, you're using a little educated guessing to get started in reaching highly qualified site visitors. Later, you can rely on specific keyword-related tools and analysis to replace your educated guesses with more concrete keywords and phrases that will help you reach

your goals.

Forbidden search terms and poison words

When you're creating your keyword lists, it's important to keep in mind that some search terms will result not in higher quality visitors, but instead in either a low ranking or even complete removal from search listings. These aren't just ineffective keywords and phrases. These are what are called forbidden search terms or poison words. These words are known to decrease your pages' rankings if a search engine finds them in your site's title, description, or even in the URL. These words can either kill or lower your pages in rankings. Here's the problem with the forbidden or poison terms: there's really no consistent or standard list of terms to which you can turn for guidance on the words you should not use. For example, vulgar words are usually considered to be forbidden or poison; however, you can do a search for one of these words and you'll return a fair number of results. However, using the words in your site tagging as a means to rank high in a search will result in your site being buried or even omitted from search results. So although there are no official lists of words that search engines use for filtering inappropriate keywords, you can figure out some guidelines for yourself.

Finalizing your keyword list

A lot of effort has gone into creating, researching, and narrowing your keyword list so far. Now it's time to finalize that list and begin putting your keywords and your PPC programs to work for you. Finalizing your keyword list doesn't really mean that it's completely final. As you've learned already, a keyword list (as it applies to PPC programs) is an ongoing element in your PPC program.You should constantly be changing and updating your keyword list. And this can be a very time-consuming process.

URLS and File Names

The URL (Universal Resource Locator) is the literal address of your web site on the Internet. It's the address that site visitors type into their browser's address bar to reach you. Or in some cases, it's the ink those users click to find you. Ideally, your URL should be as descriptive as possible without being long and hard to remember. So, as you've learned, a URL of www.atopkeyword.com is much more effective than a URL of www.partofyourcompanynameonline.com. But there is more to a URL than just the base name. For example, your site's structure probably has several levels of pages and files. So the base URL will then include a path to additional pages and folders. Unfortunately, if you have a site that has hundreds of pages or dynamic content, you could end up with a URL that looks like this:

http://www.yoursite.com/www/ISBN/B00023K9TC/ref=s9_asin_title_1-

1966_p/102-8946296-2020168?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-

1&pf_rd_r=1A562KV3VPEPKDF3Z65D&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=291577501

There are a couple of problems with that URL. The first is that there's no way visitors will remember all of it. And the second is that you've lost valuable keyword real estate because the URL is an undecipherable collection of letters and numbers.A better option with your URLs is to try to keep them as short and descriptive as possible. Say that the preceding long URL was one that leads users to a handmade red scallop shell necklace that you

What's So Important About Site Tagging?

You must be thinking that for site tagging to be addressed in this book three times it must be very important to SEO. And you would be correct. Even beyond the keywords and the PPC campaigns, site tagging is one of the most effective ways to ensure that your web site shows up on search engine results pages. The HTML tags that you include on your web site tell search engine crawlers much more about your site than your content alone will tell them. Don't misunderstand. Content is an essential element for web-site design. But it's a more customer-facing portion of the design, whereas HTML is a crawler-facing portion. And before customers will see your content, crawlers must see your HTML. So when you ask the question, "What's so important about site tagging?" there's only one possible answer: Everything. Your SEO ranking will depend in large part on the tagging that controls your page behind the scenes. Customers never see it, but without it, they never see you.

How Does Site Tagging Work?

Site tagging is about putting the right HTML commands in the right place. The difficulties come in knowing what types of tags to use and what to include in those tags. The basic tags title, heading, body, and meta tags should be included in every page that you want a search engine to find. But to make these tags readable to the search engine crawlers, they should be formatted properly. For example, with container tags, you should have both an opening and a closing tag. The opening tag is usually bracketed with two sharp brackets (<tag>). The closing tag is also bracketed, but it includes a slash before the tag to indicate that the container is closing (</tag>). Notice that the tag name is repeated in both the opening and closing tags. This just tells the crawler or web browser where a specific type of formatting or attribute should begin and end. So, when you use the Bold tag, only the words between the opening and closing tags will be formatted with a bold-faced font, instead of the entire page being bold. There's another element of web-site design that you should know and use. It's called cascading style sheets (CSS) and it's not a tagging method, but rather a formatting method. You should use CSS so that formatting tags are effective strictly in formatting, while the other tags actually do the work needed to get your site listed naturally by a search crawler.

Think of cascading style sheets as boxes, one stacked on top of another. Each box contains something different, with the most important elements being in the top box and decreasing to the least important element in the bottom box. With cascading style sheets, you can set one attribute or format to override another under the right circumstances.We won't go into creating cascading style sheets in this book. There's enough to learn about that to fill at least two additional books, and in fact dozens have been written about them.

Nofollow

One of the first tags you should consider using, as long as you can use it appropriately is the nofollowtag. This tag, which is represented by <rel="nofollow"> is an attribute that tells a search engine crawler not to follow a certain link on your web site. For example, if you want to include an example of a bad site (like a hacker's site or an SEO spam site) you may want to show that link on your web site. However, that link could reduce your search engine ranking because it's a known bad site, and when you include the link to it the crawler thinks you're endorsing the site.

Strong and emphasis

When you're formatting the text on your web site, how do you format the bold and italic words? Do you use the bold and italics tags? If you do, you should consider using CSS formatting as discussed earlier. When you format a word with <bold>, the actual site visitor can see and understand why the word is bold. A search engine crawler, and a screen reader, cannot. All the crawler or screen reader sees is the <bold> tag. There's no "emotion" associated with it. A much better use of your HTML is to use the strong and emphasis tags. The tag translates into bold formatting and the <emphasis> tag translates into italics formatting. And the difference is that when a search engine crawler or screen reader encounters these tags, it knows to pay attention to the word or words that are included in the container. Those words within the container will also be given more weight. So, if you simply boldface or

italicize your keywords, they will look just like any other words on the page when the crawler or screen reader comes through. But using the and <emphasis> tags around your keywords tells those bots to notice that the following words have importance and are more than simply additional words in the text of a page.

Noframes

<noframes> tag is supposed to make your framed web site appear to search engine crawlers as if it has no frames. Crawlers can't read multiple frames on a page, and if you're using frames it's going to be much harder to get your site ranked in the search engine results. The <noframes> tag will help, but it's not entirely foolproof. Even using the tag, you can still run into problems with browsers and crawlers. Some crawlers won't crawl a site even if it has <noframes> tags. So if you can avoid using frames, that's always your best option. However, if you have to use frames, be sure to include the <noframes> tag. However, it's still read by the crawler and in most cases, the <frameset> tags are ignored. The result is that your page, without the frames, is what is indexed by the crawler.

Using Redirect Pages

One more item you should be aware of is the effect of redirect pages on your search engine rankings. The type of redirect that you use can affect how your site is treated by a search engine. One type of redirect page is permanent, and another is temporary. The one you decide to use has serious implications for your site ranking. Three types of redirect pages are the most common ones used in designing web pages:

· 301 Redirect: The 301 redirect is a permanent redirect page. The page appears to users as they are redirected from one web site to another or from one web page to another. The original page that is no longer available will be removed within a few weeks when 301 redirects are used.

· 302 Redirect: The 302 redirect is a temporary redirect page. This page displays to users as they are redirected from one web site to another. The original page is temporarily unavailable, so when the 302 redirect is removed, the user goes back to the original site instead of the site used for redirection.

· 404 Error Pages: A 404 error page redirects users to a page that displays an error message, usually one that says something like "This page is no longer available, please check the URL and try again or use the refresh button on your browser."

How Links and Linking Work

You've seen how important links are to your SEO strategy, and you've seen how links affect your Google PageRank, but how, really, do links work for improving your SEO? As you've already seen, a link to your site is a vote for the relevance of your site. So, if you're linking out to other sites, then you're voting for them. And internal links ensure that a search engine crawler can find the various pages in your site. A dangling link is a link that leads into a page that has no links leading out of it. Each of these different types of links affects site ranking differently for engines that take linking architectures into consideration. For example, a dangling link could be ignored entirely by a search engine, or the page to which the link points could score lower on the linking metrics because all the links are coming into the page, but there are none going out. And that's what makes linking such a fine science. You need to know how the links on your site will affect the amount of traffic the site has. You also need to know how to have links without going overboard, so that the crawler labels your site as a link farm.

Snagging inbound links

Nearly every web site has links that lead out to other web sites. It's rare to find a site that doesn't link to another site somewhere on the Web. That's how communities are built around specific industries and topics. And the links that leave your site are important, but they're not nearly as important as those links that lead to your site. These inbound links, as you've already discovered, are seen by search engines as votes for your site within a particular community of sites. Anytime you're being voted for, you want to have as many votes as possible. Inbound links are no different. You want to have a large number of links that lead to your site. You can achieve those links in a variety of ways, some more effective than others:

· Requesting Links: The oldest method of gaining inbound links is to request them. This requires that you study your market to find out who the players involved in the market are. Then, you contact each one of the sites that you discover and ask them to link to your site. In most cases, the person you contact receives your request, but providing links to other sites is the least of their worries, so you may not even hear from them. If you do, it can sometimes be months later. So, you put a lot of time into requesting links from other sites for a relatively small return on your efforts.

· Writing Articles: One of the most effective methods of gaining inbound links is to offer an article for other companies to use as long as they include a paragraph of information at the bottom that includes credits for you as well as a link back to your site. This method of gaining inbound links works well, because web sites are always looking for good content to include on their pages. The catch here is that the article you write should be wellwritten, accurate, and useful to other sites in your industry. Once you've produced an article that meets these requirements, you can begin to let others know that you have content available for them to use for free. Just remember to require a link back to your site in return for the freedom to use your article on their sites.

· Blogs: Another way to get links back to your site is from bloggers. What started as a strange phenomenon that was mostly personal has now become a powerful business tool, and many businesses rely on links back to their sites from the various industry bloggers out there. In most cases, though, bloggers aren't just going to stumble onto your web site. It's far better for you to contact the blogger with information about your organization, some product that you offer, or with news that would interest them. This information then gives the blogger something to use in his or her regular posts. Keep in mind, however, that you can't control what a blogger might say, so it's possible that the review you get from the blogger won't be favorable.

· Press Releases: Press releases are one of the mainstays of any marketing program. It can be so effective that many organizations hire companies to do nothing but distribute their press releases as widely as possible. What's so powerful about a press release? It's just the facts, including benefits, and it's sent out to publications and organizations that might publish all or part of the press release. Use press releases to send out new items of all types, and send them as widely as you can. New organizations, publications, newsletters, even some forums will post press releases. When you write it, make sure a link back to your site is included in the press release. Then, when someone posts it, the link you provide leads back to your site.

· Affiliate Programs: Affiliate programs are a type of paid advertising. Amazon.com's affiliate program is one of the best-known affiliate programs. You provide a link to people who want to link back to your web site. They place the link on their site and then when someone clicks through that link to your site and makes a purchase (or converts any other goal you have arranged), the affiliate the person who placed your link on their site gets paid a small percentage. Usually the payment for affiliate programs is very low ($.01 to $.05 per click or a small percentage of the sale). But some people make a good living being affiliates, and many organizations receive additional traffic because of their affiliate programs. There are some ethical considerations with affiliate programs. Many believe that because you're paying for the link back to your site it's less valid than if you were to land organic links. However, most search engines see affiliate programs as an acceptable business practice and they don't reduce your rankings because you use affiliate programs. The trick with affiliate programs is to not allow them to be your sole source of incoming links. In addition, most affiliate programs utilize some click-tracking software, which by definition negates the value of the link, because the link on the affiliate's page is going from that page, to the ad server, to your site. So the link is from the ad server rather than the affiliate site.

· PPC and Paid Links: Pay-per-click advertisements are an acceptable business practice. There is no problem with using PPC advertisements to achieve inbound links to your site. Remember that, like affiliate links, PPC links are not direct links to your site. Paid links, on the other hand, are different from affiliate links you pay to have a direct, or flat link, placed on a page. Some search engines frown on the practice of using these types of links. Using paid links (especially those that land on link farms) is a practice that carries some business risk.

· Link to Yourself: Linking to yourself is a technique that sits right on the line between ethical and unethical. Linking to yourself from other sites that you might own is an acceptable practice. But if you set up other sites simply to be able to link back to your own site and create the illusion of popularity, you're going to do more damage than it's probably worth to you. If you are linking to yourself and you suspect that you might be doing something that would adversely affect your search engine ranking, then you shouldn't do it. There are plenty of links to be had without linking back to your own web sites; you just have to work a little harder for the higher quality links.

Creating outbound links

If controversy were an SEO strategy, everyone would be at the top of their SEO game. Unfortunately, it's not. All controversy does is muddy the waters. And that's exactly what the controversy over whether or not you should have outbound links on your site is good for making life difficult. The subject of outbound links has often been debated. There are some who worry about leaking PageRank what (supposedly) happens when you link out to other sites. The fear behind leaking is two-fold: when you lead people away from your site they may not come back (hence your visitors "leak" away), and when you link out to other pages, you're reducing the value of each "vote" because the value of an outbound link is divided by the total number of outbound links. No one knows for sure exactly what mix of elements is considered when your page is ranked by a search engine.

However, it's safe to say that if you have only inbound links and no outbound links, it can't look good for your site. And especially these days when social marketing is becoming more and more of a factor for search engine results. The best plan of action is to have a balanced mix of inbound and outbound links. Your site visitors will expect to see some links leading to other sites on the Web, whether those links are simple resources to help them find what they need or something else. Outbound links also help to establish your expertise in a particular area. Yes, inbound links help with that as well, but it's not enough just to have people pointing to you. You should also have some favorites out there that you find helpful and that you think others will find helpful. When your visitors click through these links and find that you do know what they're looking for, the loyalty points will be awarded to you.

The Basics of Link Building

Building a great linking structure for your web site is not something that happens in the time it takes to throw a web page together. Building a successful link structure takes months, and sometimes longer. When you begin creating your link structure, you'll probably have mostly outgoing links. Those are links that lead to other pages popular pages if you can manage it that will help to bring traffic back to your site. But over time, you should be building your links to include not only links back into your site, but other useful links that aren't damaging to your search engine results rankings. One of the most important things to remember as you're building your link structure is that quantity isn't nearly as important as quality. Your linking strategy will be far more successful if you create links (both inbound and outbound) that are high quality.

Link to great sites that are more popular than your own and try to gain links from those sites to your own, as well. Of course, getting those inbound links won't be nearly as easy as creating links out to other web sites. Gaining links to your site is a business process. It takes time, and lots of consistent effort on your part. As mentioned earlier, one strategy for gaining inbound links is to send letters to prospective sites, requesting a link. But don't just send out 10,000 letters, generated by some mail-merge program that doesn't customize the letters to the particular site that you're targeting. Your link request will be most effective if you can give potential linking partners a good reason for them to support you. Perhaps you can show their customers why they should purchase more of that site's products. Whatever the reason, try to give the site you're requesting a link from some motivation to take the time to add your site to their linking system.

Using Internal Links

One linking strategy that's often overlooked is internal linking. Internal links are those that lead people from one page to another within your web site. This is different from the navigational structure. Internal links are more natural links that occur in the text on your web pages. Without a good internal linking strategy, you run the risk of not having your site properly spidered. It's not enough simply to have a navigational structure or a site map (though site maps help considerably). You should also have links that lead from one element (like a blog post) to other important elements (like an archived article or news clipping on your site), so site visitors find that moving through the information they're examining on your site is a natural process that takes place without too much difficulty or thought.

The most effective methods of internal linking are text links, links within the footers of your pages, and inline text links. Text links are those with which you can use anchor tags and keywords. These links most often appear in the text of a page, though they can also appear in other places within your page, so long as the text links are relevant to the content of the page. Links within the footers of pages are a common practice now. Finally, inline links are those links most often contained within the body of some element of your site content, such as articles and blogs. These links can either be proper names or descriptors that are relevant to the pages being linked to.

What Are Directories?

Search directories offer a way of collecting and categorizing links to other web sites. They are not search engines, and behave nothing like search engines. For example, where a search engine collects entries using a search crawler or a robot, search directories are populated by people. You or someone else enters your web site into a directory. And in some cases, once you've entered it, the entry is reviewed by a real person before the site is included in directory listings. The way that your site is added to a search directory is not the only difference between search engines and search directories.

Categorization is also likely to be more accurate with a monitored directory, because someone actually checks the site to ensure proper listing. There can be fees associated with monitored directories. The most closely monitored directories are edited ones. These have a very strict structure, and to get your web site included in the listings, you must accurately provide all requested information. Additionally, edited directories reserve the right to edit or change your entry in any manner that they believe is more suitable to the directory with which you're registering. The fees associated with these types of directories can be very steep, because a person or group of people must always be monitoring the directory.

Submitting to directories

By now you've figured out that directories work differently from search engines. You must complete the submission process to have your site included in most directories. But even when you're submitting information about your site, there's an art to doing it. How you list your site can mean the difference between the site being included in the directory or not. Before you even begin to create your listing, it's usually a good idea to navigate through the directory that you're submitting to. Look at other listings and make note of what works in them. Keywords are of little importance when you're creating your directory listing. Instead, what will make the difference is the content on your web site. So if you're faced with listing in a directory that's strict about reviewing sites before they are listed, make sure you have fresh content on your site. And it's also a good practice to keep that content fresh by updating it regularly. Links can also be important when your site is being reviewed for inclusion in a directory, so be sure you keep your links updated. Broken links can be detrimental to your site, and links that lead to unrelated pages won't reflect well either.

Other elements of your listing that editors evaluate for include:

· Appropriate categorization

· Accurate titles and descriptions

· Title and descriptions relevant to the subject of the web site

· Domain names that match site titles

· Secure ordering capabilities on e-commerce sites

· Contact information that's easily accessible

· Links to privacy policies, return policies, and product or service guarantees

· Working and appropriate links to other sites and resources

· Images that display properly in the most common browser formats

· JavaScript that's free of errors

What Constitutes SEO Spam?

So, if SEO spam is so hard to define, how do you know whether what you're doing is right or wrong? Good question. And the answer is that you don't always know, but there are some guidelines that you can follow that will help you stay out of the spam category. Basic, good web-design practices are your best defense. If you're handling your web-site search marketing using the guidelines provided by the various search engines you'll target, you should be in a position not to worry about being classified as a spammer.

· Don't do anything that makes you worry that you're doing wrong. It sounds like simple advice, but when you think about it, if you're doing something on your web site that you have to worry is going to get you banned from a search engine, you probably shouldn't do it. This includes strategies like using hidden text on your web pages, using doorway pages or cloaking your pages, and creating false link structures. Even if you don't know that these strategies are banned by search engines, when you consider the sneakiness of the strategy, you'll be able to tell that it's not likely a strategy that you should use.

· Don't make your web site appear to be something that it's not. It's easy to "put a spin" on something to make it appear more attractive than it really is. People do it all the time where products and services are concerned. But using that same strategy on your web site may get you banned. Creating false link structures is one way you might make your site appear more popular than it really is. The problem with using that strategy is that it won't take a crawler long to figure out that all of those sites are interconnected.

· Don't trust someone who says that a certain practice is acceptable, if you even suspect that it's not. Some unethical SEO people will tell you that it's okay if you use certain obvious spam techniques as long as you use them correctly. Wrong. Spam is spam. It doesn't matter how you use it, the search crawler will still see it as spam and you'll still pay the consequences, while the unethical SEO consultant will take the money and leave you in the crawler's bad graces. SEO spam is also called spamdexing (because you're spamming indexes) and can come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. There are some spam techniques that are obviously spam. But then there are some that aren't clearly spam, but that you should avoid. The list of spamming techniques is huge. But there are a dozen or so items on that list that are constant.

· Transparent links: These are links that are included in the page, but that users can't see because they're the same color as the background.

· Hidden links: These links are on the page but are hidden behind elements like graphics. They don't turn the graphic into a hyperlink, but a search engine can find them and follow them, even when people can't.

· Misleading links: Misleading links are those that appear to lead to one place but actually lead to another. An example of a misleading link is one that reads www.onewebsite.com but actually takes you to www.differentwebsite.com

Page jacking

Page jacking is a method of search engine spam that's similar in nature to scraping. The difference is that with page jacking, whole pages and even whole web sites are copied for the purpose of increasing search ranking and traffic for another site. In one example of page jacking, a person might copy a whole site like Microsoft. They then cloak that site, but it still appears in search listings. Then, when unsuspecting users click through the listing for Microsoft they're taken not to the Microsoft page, but to another page that the hijacker funnels them to. Not only is page jacking a good way to get your web site delisted from search engine results, but it's also a crime that can result in a stiff fine and possibly jail time. There are also trademark and copy- right infringement issues associated with page jacking.

Bait and switch

Bait and switch in SEO is the practice of creating an optimized web page specifically for search engines with the intent of obtaining good rankings. When those rankings are obtained, the company replaces the optimized site with one that's less optimized and more normal. The result is nearly instant traffic when the site has been switched. Bait and switch does have one downfall. Most search engine crawlers revisit a site several times a month. And when the crawler revisits a bait-and-switch site, it will see that the content of the site has changed, and will adjust search rankings accordingly. In other words, the person who set up the bait and switch put a lot of time into a temporary optimization solution.

It makes much more sense to do your optimization the right way the first time out. Then, when the crawler comes back through looking at your site, it sees a consistent picture of the site, and the ranking of the site will remain consistent.

Cloaking

Cloaking is another sleight-of-hand SEO technique. For SEO purposes, cloaking a site is a method of delivering a page based on who is requesting the page. For example, if a web site is using cloaking, when a regular visitor comes to the site, that visitor will see one page. But when a search crawler comes to the site, it sees a much more relevant, better optimized site.

Search engines frown on cloaking, and if you're caught using cloaking techniques, your site will be penalized or even delisted completely. There is another reason that people use cloaking on their web sites. Instead of trying to trick search engines, some web-site owners use cloaking to protect the source code of their web site. Because it's possible for anyone to choose Show Source or Display Source Code from their browser's tool menu, it's sometimes frustrating for organizations that want to keep their source code proprietary. Instead of putting it out for the whole world to see, these companies use page cloaking. But this is not an advisable way to protect your code. Search engine crawlers don't like cloaked sites and your site will be penalized if you choose to use cloaking for any reason.

Before You Build Your Site

One of the most common misconceptions about SEO is that it should be implemented after a web site has been built. It can be, but it's much harder. A better option is to consider SEO even before you begin to build your web site, if that's at all possible. It may not be. But if that's the case, you can still implement SEO strategies in the design of your site; it will just require a lot more work than building it in at the beginning.

Know your target

Before you even start contemplating how to build your web site, you should know in what types of search engines it's most important for your site to be ranked. Search engines are divided into several types, beyond the primary, secondary, and targeted search engines. In addition, search engine types are determined by how information is entered into the index or catalog that's used to return search results. The three types of search engines are:

1. Crawler-based engines:

To this point, the search engines discussed fall largely into this category. A crawler-based search engine (like Google) uses an automated software agent (called a crawler) to visit, read, and index web sites. All the information collected by the crawler is returned to a central repository. This is called indexing. It is from this index that search engine results are pulled. Crawler-based search engines revisit web pages periodically in a time frame determined by the search engine administrator.

2. Human-powered engines:

Human-powered search engines rely on people to submit the information that is indexed and later returned as search results. Sometimes, human powered search engines are called directories. Yahoo! is a good example of what, at one time, was a human-powered search engine. Yahoo! started as a favorites list belonging to two people who needed an easier way to share their favorite web site. Over time, Yahoo! took on a life of its own. It's no longer completely human-controlled. A newer search engine called Mahalo (www.mahalo.com) is entirely human-powered, however, and it's creating a buzz on the Web.

3. Hybrid engine:

A hybrid search engine is not entirely populated by a web crawler, nor entirely by human submission. A hybrid is a combination of the two. In a hybrid engine, people can manually submit their web sites for inclusion in search results, but there is also a web crawler that monitors the Web for sites to include. Most search engines today fall into the hybrid category to at least some degree. Although many are mostly populated by crawlers, others have some method by which people can enter their web site information. It's important to understand these distinctions, because how your site ends up indexed by a search engine may have some bearing on when it's indexed. For example, fully automated search engines that use web crawlers might index your site weeks (or even months) before a human-powered search engine. The reason is simple. The web crawler is an automated application. The human-powered search engine may actually require that all entries be reviewed for accuracy before a site is included in search results.

Page elements

Another facet of SEO to consider before you build your web site is the elements needed to ensure that your site is properly indexed by a search engine. Each search engine places differing importance on different page elements. For example, Google is a very keyword-driven search engine; however, it also looks at site popularity and at the tags and links on any given page. How well your site performs in a search engine is determined by how the elements of your page meet the engine's search criteria. The main criteria that every search engine looks for are the site text (meaning keywords), tags both HTML and meta tags site links, and the site popularity.

Text

Text is one of the most important elements of any web site. Of particular importance are the keywords within the text on a page, where those keywords appear, and how often they appear. This is why keyword marketing has become such a large industry in a relatively short time. Your keywords make all the difference when a search engine indexes your site and then serves it up in search results. Keywords must match the words and phrases that potential visitors will use when searching for your site (or for the topic or product that's listed on your site). To ensure that your keywords are effective, you'll need to spend some time learning which keywords work best for your site. That means doing keyword research and testing the keywords that you do select to see how effective they really are.

Tags

In search engine optimization, two kinds of tags are important on your web site: meta tags and HTML tags. Technically, meta tags are HTML tags, they just appear in very specific places. The two most important meta tags are the keyword tag and the description tag. The keyword tag occurs at the point where you list the keywords that apply to your web site. A keyword tag on a search engine optimization page might look something like this:

The description tag gives a short description of your page. Such a tag for the search engine optimization page might look like this:

Not all search engines take meta tags into consideration. For that reason, you site should use both meta tags and other HTML tags. Some of the other HTML tags that you should include on your web site are the title tag, the top (or H1) heading tags, and the anchor tags. The title tag is the tag that's used in the title of your web site. This tag will appear like this: <Title>Your Title Here</Title>. Once you've tagged your site with a title tag, when a user pulls the site up, the title that you entered will appear at the very top of the page if the user is using an Internet Explorer browser (IE) earlier than IE7. In IE7 and the Firefox browser, the title will appear on the browser tab. High-level headings (H1s) are also important when a crawler examines your web site. Your keywords should appear in your H1 headings, and in the HTML tags you use to create those headings. An H1 tag might look like this: <h1>High-Level Heading</h1>

Anchor tags are used to create links to other pages. An anchor tag can point users to another web page, a file on the Web, or even an image or sound file. You're probably most familiar with the anchor tags used to create links to other web sites. Here's what an anchor tag might look like:

Links

To be of value, the links on your web pages must be related to the content of the page, and they must be active links to real web sites. Broken links can lower your search engine ranking. Links have always been an important factor in how web sites rank on the Web, but the abuse of linking that we see so often today started just a few years ago, about the time that Google became the big name in search.

When links became a ranking criterion, many black-hat SEOs began building link farms, which are sites that are nothing more than pages full of links designed to gain high search engine rankings. It didn't take long for search engine administrators to figure out this sneaky optimization trick, so they changed the criteria by which links are ranked. Now link farms are fairly ineffective, but links on your web site are still important. Links show an interactivity with the community (other sites on the Web), which points to the legitimacy of your web site. Links aren't the only, or even the highest, ranking criteria, but they are important all the same.

Popularity

One other consideration, even before you build your site, is the site's popularity. Many search engines include a criterion for the number of times users click on web sites that are returned in search results. The more often the site is selected from the search results, the higher in the ranking it climbs. For you, that means you should begin building the popularity of your site, even before it is built.

Begin building buzz about the site through advertisements, info-torials, and even newsletter or other e-mail announcements. Then redouble those efforts as soon as the site goes live to the public. It's a riddle to which there is no easy answer. You optimize your web site for search engines in order to build popularity, but your ranking in the search engine can be determined by how popular your site is. There is no magic formula that helps you solve the riddle. It requires time and consistent effort to draw visitors to your site

Does hosting matter?

That question comes up frequently when a company or individual is designing a web site. Does it matter who hosts your site? The answer is no, but that's not to say that domain hosting is unimportant. Elements of the hosting have a major impact on how your site ranks in search results. One of the biggest issues that you'll face with domain hosting is the location of your hosting company. If you're in the United States and you purchase a domain that is hosted on a server in England, your search engine rankings will suffer.

Geographically, search engine crawlers will read your site as being contradictory to your location. Because many search engines serve up results with some element of geographical location included, this contradiction could be enough to affect your ranking. The length of time for which you register your domain name could also affect your search engine ranking. Many hackers use throw away domains, or domain names that are registered for no more than a year, because they usually don't even get to use the domain for a full year before they are shut down. For this reason some search engines have implemented ranking criteria that give priority to domains registered for longer periods. A longer registration also shows a commitment to maintaining the web site.

Domain-naming tips

The question of what to name a web site is always a big one. When selecting a name, most people think in terms of their business name, personal name, or a word or phrase that has meaning for them. What they don't think about is how that name will work for the site's SEO. Does the name have anything at all to do with the site, or is it completely unrelated? A few more things that you should keep in mind when you're determining your domain name include:

· Keep the name as short as possible. Too many characters in a name mean increased potential for misspellings. It also means that your site address will be much harder for users to remember unless it's something really startling.

· Avoid dashes, underscores, and other meaningless characters. If the domain name that you're looking for is taken, don't just add a random piece of punctuation or numerology to the name to "get close." Close doesn't count here. Instead, try to find another word that's relevant, and possibly included in the list of keywords you'll be using. For example, instead of purchasing www.yourwebsite2.com, try to find something like www.yoursitesubject.com.

· Opt for a .com name whenever possible. There are lots of domain extensions to choose from: info, biz, us, tv, names, jobs. However, if the .com version of your chosen domain name is available, that's always the best choice. Users tend to think in terms of .com, and any other extension will be hard for them to remember. Com names also tend to receive higher rankings in search engines than web sites using other extensions. So if your competition has www.yoursite.com and you choose to use www.yoursite.biz, chances are the competition will rank higher in search results than you.

Again, it's important to realize that domain naming is only one facet of SEO strategy. It won't make or break your SEO, but it can have some effect. So take the time to think about the name you plan to register for your site. If you can use a name that not only reaches your audience but also lands you a little higher in search results, then by all means purchase it. But if no name really seems to work in

Understanding usability

Usability means different things to different web site designers. It's also been at the top of every user's requirements list since the Web became part of daily life. When users click through to your web site from a search results page, they want the site to work for them. That means they want to be able to find what they're looking for, to navigate from place to place, and to be able to load pages quickly, without any difficulties. Web-site users are impatient. They don't like to wait for pages to load, they don't want to deal with Flash graphics or JavaScript, and they don't want to be lost. These are all elements of usability how the user navigates through and uses your web site. And yes, usability has an impact on SEO.

Especially from the perspective of your site links and loading times. When a search engine crawler comes to your site, it crawls through the site, looking at keywords, links, contextual clues, meta and HTML tags, and a whole host of other elements. The crawler will move from page to page, indexing what it finds for inclusion in search results. But if that crawler reaches the first page and can't get past the fancy Flash you've created, or if it gets into the site and finds links that don't work or that lead to unexpected locations, it will recognize this and make note of it in the indexed site data. That can damage your search engine rankings.

Navigation knowledge

When you consider web-site navigation, there are two types: internal navigation and external navigation. Internal navigation involves the links that move users from one page to another on your site. External navigation refers to links that take users away from your page. For your navigation to be SEO-friendly, you have to use both types of navigation carefully. Look at a number of different high-ranking web sites. How is the navigation of those sites designed? In most cases, you'll find that the top sites have a left-hand navigation bar that's often text-based, and some have a button-based navigation bar across the top of the page. Few have just buttons down the left side, and all of them have text links somewhere in the landing page.

The navigation for many sites looks the same, because this plan works. Having a text-based navigation bar on the left works for SEO because it allows you to use anchor tags with the keywords you're using for the site. It also allows crawlers to move from one page to another with ease. Buttons are harder for crawlers to navigate, and depending on the code in which those buttons are designed, they might be completely invisible to the crawler. That's why many companies that put button-based links at the top of the page also usually include a text-based navigation bar on the left. The crawler can still move from page to page, but the user is happy with the design of the site

Creating great content

Web-site content is another element of an SEO-friendly site that you should spend plenty of time contemplating and completing. Fortunately, there are some ways to create web-site content that will make search crawlers love you. Great content starts with the right keywords and phrases. Select no more than three keywords or phrases to include in the content on any one of your web pages. But why only three? Wouldn't more keywords and phrases ensure that search engines take notice of your site? When you use too many keywords in your content, you face two problems. The first is that the effectiveness of your keywords will be reduced by the number of different ones you're using. Choose two or three for each page of your site and stick with those.

The other problem you face is being delisted or ignored because a search engine sees your SEO efforts as keyword stuffing. It's a serious problem, and search engine crawlers will exclude your site or pages from indexes if there are too many keywords on those pages. Once you have the two or three keywords or phrases that you plan to focus on, you need to actually use those keywords in the content of your page. Many people think the more frequently you use the words, the higher your search engine ranking will be. Again, that's not necessarily true. Just as using too many different keywords can cause a crawler to exclude you from a search engine index, overusing the same word will also cause crawlers to consider your attempts as keyword stuffing. Again, you run the risk of having your site excluded from search indexes.

The term used to describe the number of times a keyword is used on a page is keyword density. For most search engines, the keyword density is relatively low. Google is very strict about ranking sites that have a keyword density of 5 to 7 percent; much lower or much higher and your ranking is seriously affected or completely lost. Yahoo!, MSN, and other search engines allow keyword densities of about 5 percent. Going over that mark could cause your site to be excluded from search results.

Keyword density is an important factor in your web-site design. But there are other content concerns, too. Did you know that the freshness and focus of your content is also important in how high your web site ranks? One reason many companies began using blogs on their web sites was that blogs are updated frequently and they're highly focused on a specific topic. This gives search engines new, relevant content to crawl, and crawlers love that.

Consider implementing a content strategy that includes regularly adding more focused content or expanding your content offerings. It doesn't have to be a blog, but news links on the front page of the site, regularly changing articles, or some other type of changing content will help gain the attention of a search engine crawler. Don't just set these elements up and leave them, however. You also have to carry through with regular updates and keep the links included in the content active. Broken links are another crawler pet peeve. Unfortunately, with dynamic content links will occasionally break. Be sure you're checking this element of your content on a regular basis and set up some kind of a userfeedback loop so broken links can be reported to your webmaster

Finally, when you're creating your web-site content, consider interactive forums. If you're adding articles to your site, give users a forum in which they can respond to the article, or a comments section. This leads to more frequent updates of your content, which search crawlers love. The result An interactive relationship with your web-site users will keep them coming back, and give an extra boost to your search engine ranking.

Maximizing graphics

Images or graphics on your web site are essential. They're also basically ignored by search engines, so what's the point of putting them on your site? There's a good reason that has nothing to do with SEO. Without images, your page is just boring text. You're not going to be happy with using plain text instead of that cool new logo you had designed for your company, and neither are your users. They want to see pictures.

Programming languages

One aspect of web-site design you might not think of when planning your SEO strategy is the programming language used in developing the site. Programming languages all behave a little differently. For example, HTML uses one set of protocols to accomplish the visuals you see when you open a web page, whereas PHP uses a completely different set of protocols. And when most people think of web-site programming, they think in terms of HTML. But the truth is that many other languages also are used for coding web pages. And those languages may require differing SEO strategies.

JavaScript

JavaScript is a programming language that allows web designers to create dynamic content. However, it's also not necessarily SEO-friendly. In fact, JavaScript often completely halts a crawler from indexing a web site, and when that happens the result is lower search engine rankings or complete exclusion from ranking.

Flash

Flash is another of those technologies that some users absolutely hate. That's because Flash, though very cool, is resource intensive. It causes pages to load slower, and users often get stuck on an opening Flash page and can't move forward until the Flash has finished executing. If the user is in a hurry, it's a frustrating thing to deal with. Flash is also a nightmare when it comes to SEO. A Flash page can stop a web crawler in its tracks, and once stopped, the crawler won't resume indexing the site. Instead, it will simply move on to the next web site on its list. The easiest way to overcome Flash problems is simply not use it. But despite the difficulties with search rankings, some organizations need to use Flash. If yours is one of them, the Flash can be coded in HTML and an option can be added to test for the ability to see Flash before the Flash is executed. However, there's some debate over whether or not this is an "acceptable" SEO practice, so before you implement this type of strategy in an effort to improve your SEO effectiveness, take the time to research the method.

Dynamic ASP

Most of the sites you'll encounter on the Web are static web pages. These sites don't change beyond the regular updates by a webmaster. On the other hand, dynamic web pages are web pages that are created on the fly according to preferences that users specify in a form or menu. The sites can be created using a variety of different programming technologies including dynamic ASP. The problem with these sites is that they don't technically exist until the user creates them. Because a web crawler can't make the selections that "build" these pages, most dynamic web pages aren't indexed in search engines. There are ways around this, however. Dynamic URLs can be converted to static URLs with the right coding. It's also possible to use paid inclusion services to index dynamic pages down to a predefined number of levels (or number of selections, if you're considering the site from the user's point of view).

Dynamic ASP, like many of the other languages used to create web sites, carries with it a unique set of characteristics. But that doesn't mean SEO is impossible for those pages. It does mean that the approach used for the SEO of static pages needs to be modified. It's an easy enough task, and a quick search of the Internet will almost always provide the programming code you need to achieve SEO.

PHP

Search engine crawlers being what they are preprogrammed applications there's a limit to what they can index. PHP is another of those programming languages that falls outside the boundaries of normal web-site coding. Search engine crawlers see PHP as another obstacle if it's not properly executed. Properly executed means that PHP needs to be used with search engines in mind. For example, PHP naturally stops or slows search engine crawlers. But with some attention and a solid understanding of PHP and SEO, it's possible to code pages that work, even in PHP.

One thing that works well with PHP is designing the code to look like HTML. It requires an experienced code jockey, but it can be done. And once the code has been disguised, the PHP site can be crawled and indexed so that it's returned in search results.

After Your Site Is Built

Building the right site to help maximize your SEO efforts is a difficult task. And when you're finished, the work doesn't end. SEO is an ongoing strategy, not a technology that you can implement and forget. Time needs to be spent reviewing your practices, examining results, and making adjustments where necessary. If this ongoing maintenance is ignored, your SEO efforts to this point will quickly become time that would have been better spent standing out on the street with a sign around your neck advertising your web site. That might be more effective than outdated SEO.

Beware of content thieves

Maintenance of your SEO strategies is also essential in helping you find problems that might be completely unrelated to SEO. For example, SEO strategies can help you locate content thieves. One such strategy is tagging your web site. Some people (including black-hat SEOs) take snippets of content from your site to use on their own. If you tag your content properly, you can use some very distinctive tags, which will help you quickly locate content that has been stolen. Another way in which SEO helps you to locate stolen content is through tracking. Presumably, if you're executing SEO strategies, you're monitoring your site metrics with a program like Google Analytics. Watching the metrics used by one of those analytics programs can help you locate content thieves. For example, if you look at your incoming links on one of these programs, you might find that people are coming to your site from a completely unexpected location. If that's the case, you can follow the link back to that site to find out why. A site using stolen content is easy to find using this method. There are also many services available that will help you track your web-site content.

Tagging works well for finding content thieves, and there's another tactic you can use to thwart automatic content scrapers domain cloaking. This is a process by which your web site appears to be located somewhere other than where it is. This is accomplished using an HTML frame set that redirects traffic from one URL to another. For example, if your web site address is www.you.somewhere.com, you can use domain cloaking to have your site appear to be www.yourbusiness.com. The problem with using domain cloaking is that it can confuse a search engine crawler, because the same content appears to be on two pages, although it's only one page and one that redirects. And another problem is that some search engine crawlers can't read the frame set that's used to redirect the user, which means your site may end up not being ranked at all. This is a tactic that should only be used in special cases where content is truly unique and could possibly affect your SEO rankings (or that of someone who might steal it) in a dramatic way.

Dealing with updates and site changes

One last problem you may encounter after you've initially set up your SEO strategies is the updates and changes that your site will go through. Often, people feel that once the SEO is in place, then it's always in place, and they don't have to think about it again. But believing this can lead to a very unpleasant surprise.

When your site changes, especially if there are content updates or changes to the site structure, links can be broken, tags may be changed, and any number of other small details may be overlooked. When this happens, the result can be a reduced ranking for your site. Site crawlers look at everything, from your tags to your links, and based on what they see, your ranking could fluctuate from day to day. If what the crawler sees indications that your site has changed in a negative way, the site's ranking will be negatively affected. Many things affect the way your site ranks in a search engine. Realize that SEO is not a simple undertaking. It is a complex, time-consuming strategy for improving your business. And without attention to all of the details, you could just be wasting your time. So plan to invest the time needed to ensure that your search engine optimization efforts are not wasted.