Archive for the ‘SEO Basics’ Category
published by Dan in SEO Basics
- Make content accessible to search engine spiders - Make sure all content that you want to be searchable can be found by search engines. Remember that certain formats like Flash pages and Java script drop down menus can not be crawled by search engines. Do not forget to provide a way for search engines to know the content of those pages/elements.
- Make sure your site’s server is clean - This is very important for those using shared servers. If you happen to be sharing a proxy server with a banned/flagged site this could affect your ranking.
- Provide fresh content - Sites that rarely update their content can do this by publishing RSS/News feeds or by adding a blog. The blog need not be updated daily but posting a couple of times or a bit more per week is recommended.
- Settle canonicalisation issues - Figure out which URL you want to be the primary URL (with www. or without the www) and 301 redirect the other URL to the primary URL.
- Look at your SERPs standing and not on page rank - While a higher page rank should make you happy the true test of whether your SEO efforts is paying off or not is your placement in SERPs for the keywords you are targeting. A high page rank does help but there are lots of instances wherein pages with a lower page rank out do ones with higher page ranks in SERPs.
to be continued…
Popularity: 75% [?]
published by Dan in SEO Basics
- Incorporate your SEO campaign into your overall website strategy - See previous post on reasons for SEO.
- Do exhaustive keyword research before selecting keywords to optimise for - A cursory keyword research will still get you results but you can almost be sure that you’ll either miss some very important keywords that will result in higher conversion rates or that you’ll end up optimising for some keywords that will not yield that much results. Either way it will result in wasted resources.
- Make sure you provide quality content - Content is and always will be king. There’s no point optimising for a site that doesn’t have something of real value to offer. When it comes to keywords in the site’s text make sure that they can be found there and that variations of the keywords/phrases pepper the pages. However, make sure that the content still sounds natural and that the content doesn’t look spammy. Keyword stuffing is a big no since it makes for substandard content.
- Keyword placement - I’ve posted on this several times. Make sure keywords are placed where it counts (title tags, anchor texts, ALT tags, etc.).
- Focus on link building - Get as much relevant links as possible. Non-relevant links are okay as long as they’re not from link spammers and as long as you get more relevant links than non-relevant ones.
to be continued…
Popularity: 78% [?]
published by Dan in SEO | SEO Basics
- SEO does not guarantee results overnight - Patience is one of the virtues SEOs must develop!
- SEO will get you the traffic but won’t guarantee conversions - You still need good content and a good website design to convince the traffic sent by search engines to take the action you want them to.
- SEO is hinged on keyword selection - If you want a successful SEO campaign you need to make sure that you select the most important/relevant keywords/ke phrases to target.
- SEO is a continuous effort - Search engines are very dynamic. To keep up with the changes in search engine algorithms you should make sure that you keep an eye on your site’s optimisation efforts. SEO is definitely NOT a one-time thing. You also need to regularly look at your keywords to see if you should be targeting new ones.
- SEO starts with website debugging - Time and again I have emphasised the importance of checking bugs, both critical and trivial, before doing SEO. You can not optimise a broken site!
- SEO service providers are not equal - Make sure you hire the services of a good/experienced SEO service provider if you want to get real results. Stay away from SEOs that promise results overnight. Chances are they will employ black hat tactics to show you “results”, which in the end will endanger more than benefit your website.
Popularity: 80% [?]
published by Dan in SEO | SEO Basics
I firmly believe that every now and then it is important that we review SEO basics to make sure that we do not neglect anything. The good thing about reviewing SEO basics is that you get to check whether you are losing sight of the reason why you are doing SEO.
- To get traffic from search engines - The primary purpose of SEO is NOT to be number in SERPs but to get as much traffic as from search engines as possible! This distinction is important because though you might rank better than before your SEO efforts still can’t be considered a success if you don’t reach the number of traffic you need/want from search engines.
- To get interested visitors from search engines - This pertains to relevance. You want the traffic you get to be interested in the content of your website. If you get a very high bounce rate then you need to take a close look at your keywords and start targeting search terms that are more relevant to your site’s actual content.
These are the two most basic reasons for SEO, however, if you look at the bigger picture you will see that even the above reasons exist to support the primary goal of your site (market your products online, educate people about your field, etc.). Hence, always remember that SEO is just a tool to help you reach your website’s aim. If you want to do effective SEO then do not lose sight of your goals.
Popularity: 80% [?]
published by Dan in SEO | SEO Basics
If you want to be really good at SEO you should make sure that you keep track of the changes going on in the search engines’ algorithms. Why is this?
Since the algorithm is the equation(s) used by the search engines to compute a website’s rank in comparison to other websites then it is obviously important. Simply put it is the algorithm that will determine how your site fares in SERPs.
So what do you need to know about search engine algorithms?
- We do not know exactly what the equation is but if you want your website and your client’s website to do well then you have to understand the factors that impact a website’s ranking as well as the kind of impact these factors result in.
- The algorithm used by each search engine is different, however, the majority of factors they use to compute for a website’s rank is the same. However, they differ in the weight they give to each factor and their approach in solving ranking issues.
- The algorithm used by all search engines changes. This is the reason why it is very important to stay updated if you offer SEO services.
Popularity: 37% [?]
published by Dan in SEO | SEO Basics
The question to this answer depends on whether you already have an existing site or not. If you already have a website and you have determined that you do wish to get more traffic from search engines then the time to start optimising your site is immediately. Of course this means assessing the current state of your website first but this assessment and planning stage is actually already a part of the process called search engine optimisation.
If you do not have a website yet SEO can be started before the website is finished. Factors that affect search engine optimisation should be considered during the planning stage of the design process. Some of these factors would include your website’s hosting, the domain name, layout/positioning of keytext, etc. It is better to integrate search engine optimisation with web design to save on time and effort rather than having to backtrack after the whole design, which is full of holes (at least in the SEO perspective), is already implemented. Because of this it is obviously a good idea to hire a web designer that also knows about SEO or that at least has SEO partners they can work with.
Popularity: 55% [?]
published by Dan in SEO | SEO Basics
Being an SEO blog, Doublespark obviously believes that SEO is beneficial to websites. But what exactly are the benefits that SEO brings? Here are just a few of the benefits that SEO bring.
- Increases the amount of targeted traffic to your site from search engines.
- Increases the amount of traffic to your site from links found in other pages (an effect of your link building campaign, which is an integral part of SEO).
- Leads to adherence in sound web design principles in terms of accessibility.
- Contributes to your site’s usability.
- Targeted incoming traffic results to higher sales as well as a high ROI (return of investment).
- SEO principles can be applied to your online ad campaign particularly to search engine marketing (SEM).
Got any other benefits in mind? Share it and leave a comment.
Popularity: 44% [?]
published by Dan in SEO | SEO Basics
The answer to this question is really short - less than 100. According to Google’s design and content guidelines you should “Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).” Though the actual reason for this is not stated it is logical to assume that this has something to do with the bot’s ability to crawl the links. If you place more than a hundred links in one page chances are that the search engines spiders wouldn’t be able to crawl all those links. Since you cannot say which links will be the ones crawled and which wouldn’t important pages may be left undiscovered.
Use common sense and simply obey Google. Of course this rule doesn’t apply to you if your website is actually a directory or contains listings and you need to pur more than 100 links on a single page. However, it still does make sense to limite the links in a page because cramming all the listings in a single page will make it hard for users to skim through them. By limiting the links in a page it will not only be good for your SEO but will also make your site more usable.
Popularity: 44% [?]
published by Dan in SEO | SEO Basics
One of the biggest stumbling blocks for search engines to access all of a website’s contents is are forms. Often entire pages of submission forms or at least portions of it cannot be crawled by search engines via hyperlinks. This is actually a good thing if you specifically want that form to not be indexed by search engines (like for credit card information forms). However, in certain cases, when the content does not pertain to sensitive information, it makes sense to ensure that the content can still be indexed by search engines. Make sure that these forms can be accesses through a link so that search engines can crawl these pages.
Aside from making sure that the they can be accessed by search engines you should also make sure that they are error free so that users can also access them. There is no point in having the page be indexed by a search engine and showing up in SERPs if the users that find it through search are unable to use the form. Though this falls more of under web design as I have mentioned repeatedly you can only optimise a website if it does not contain too critical errors. Testing and debugging should always be done even before you start optimisation.
Popularity: 49% [?]
published by Dan in SEO Basics
The size of your web page actually matters to search engines. Although the file size of a page does not affect its page rank it matters because search engines have a limit to the size of the page that they cache. Search engines cache all pages regardless of size (unless of course you specify that the page not be cached) however those that are over 150K in size are truncated. This means that keywords and phrases that were cut-off wouldn’t be indexed, which is not a good thing for your SEO.
Having your web pages’ contents fully cached is also desirable for your users desirable because you want them to be able to access all of your site’s contents even when your server is down. If your web page has too much content and there are still important information towards the end of the page it might not show in the end. Note though that the cache limit usually apply only top HTML and text files but PDF files are sually cached in its entirety even when above 150K in size.
Aside from ensuring that search engines can fully cache the contents of your page a smaller file size is beneficial to your users because it will result in a faster download speed, which is always a good thing. If you have too much content then do not cram it all into one page. Break it up into sections and alot one page per section. That way it will make your content not only more readable but also limit the file size so that it can be fully cached by search engines.
Popularity: 55% [?]
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