Comprehensive Search Engine Optimization Tutorial

1. Choosing the right keywords on which to optimize your site.

The first and obvious step in search engine optimization is choosing the keywords in which to optimize your site. For this, you should do a little research in order to identify the keywords that will produce the best results.

a. Determine the correct keywords. The main idea of delivering traffic to a website is to increase sales, and the only way to accomplish that through search engines is by optimizing your site with pertinent keywords. You should, however, be realistic in setting your goals and not select keywords that have already been used too much. You will have a better chance of getting indexed highly by smartly using less common keywords or keyword phrases (keyword phrases count as one keyword) that directly describe your web page.

A lot of people do not realize that each and every page of a website can serve as an entry point. Each page should be treated individually and be optimized for different keywords to give your website the potential to drive even more incoming traffic.

b. Use keyword suggestion tools. To help you get ideas or drill down to the best keyword, you can use Overture’s Keyword Suggestion Tool. The utility lets one find out the how many people search for a particular keyword and other keywords related to it. Google also has a similar utility called Adwords Keyword Tool which displays related keyword suggestions, minus the data on how many people search for it.

2. HTML code optimization.

Now that we know which keywords to use for our site, we now need to learn what elements of page design and development can affect the site’s search engine placement.

a) The Title tag. Probably one of the most important tags overlooked by most developers is the title tag. The title tag carries significant weight in search engine optimization, and must include the specific keywords in which the current page is to be optimized for. A lot of developers use the same title for every page of their website, and this lazy practice is guaranteed to place your index rank at the bottom of search engines.

Ideally, it should contain a maximum of 3 keywords (also the maximum number of keywords in which to optimize a single page) and be less than 50 characters. Also, the title tag is the first to appear when a website is displayed in a search engine’s results, so placing the keywords there is obviously smart.

b) The Meta Keyword Tag. If the Title tag is the most overlooked, the Meta Keyword tag is probably the most overused. The tag is used to identify the keywords to associate with a website – and it is because of this that most sites put every conceivable keyword in their Meta Keyword tag. However, search engines today are a lot smarter today, and unless those keywords are actually used in the page content, they have no bearing at all – and most times will even harm your search engine rankings. This is generally known today as keyword spamming. In order to increase your site’s relevancy, do not use more than 3 keywords for a given page, and make sure to use those in your Meta Keyword tag.

c) The Meta Description Tag. This is the description that normally appears the below the main link when your site appears in a search engine’s results. It should contain a simple but compelling description of your page. It should also contain your keywords. Ideally, it should be less than 250 characters.

d) Heading Tags. Using Heading tags and incorporating your keywords into them improves your page’s relevance because when search engines scan your page content, they interpret headings as highlighting the topics of the content that follows. Using the <H1>, <H2>, <H3> tags each provide additional relevance to page content, in the same order of importance. Normally, you would just use the <H1> and <H2> tags.

e) Font Tags. Using bold or italic fonts to highlight some keywords may give you a very small boost in page relevancy. Be careful not to overuse it though, and make every keyword bold or italic. The content should still look natural.

f) Image Alt. Unknown to a lot of developers is the fact that using the Alt attribute of your images can actually help boost your keyword density. Be sure to use relevant keywords when describing your images using the Alt attribute.

3. Keyword Density

The hard part in writing content for search engine optimized content is maintaining keyword density. Keyword density is simply the total number of keywords occurrences divided by the total number of words. Creating keyword-rich text is somewhat of a challenge, because you would have to repeat keywords again and again, without sounding unnatural. The ideal keyword-density is 4-8%. However, if your competitors have a higher keyword density, you may have to increase yours.

4. Link Optimization

a) External Links. It is probably one of the most important factors in having a highly ranked website in search engines. Links from other websites pointing to yours is your best bet in having a top index ranking. Unfortunately, it is also the most tedious and time-consuming to do. Normally, this is achieved by offering reciprocal links with other websites. To do this you must contact them and see if they are willing to do this. It is also important to note that websites that are not highly ranked in search engines do not contribute much to your search engine ranking when they link to you. Try to get links from highly ranked sites.

b) Internal Links. It is important for individual pages of your website to have access to the rest of the site. This allows search engines to crawl the rest of your site once they have indexed one of your pages.

c) Anchor Text. The words used to link to your pages, that is, the text between the <href> and <a> tags, add weight to your search engine placement. Whether the link come from outside or within your website, it is best to make the anchor text incorporate some of your keywords.

d) Domain names. Your domain name also has bearing on your ability to be placed highly in search engines. It would be best to choose a domain name that incorporated one or more of your keywords.

5. What to Avoid

a) Flash. OK, maybe not entirely. Flash certainly can make your site stand out when used effectively. Flash animations have now fallen out of favor, but it is now being reinvented as a web application and purpose-driven multimedia tool. While Google can now index flash, a lot of search engines still can’t - so try to keep it to a minimum. Also, watch out, while Google can index text in Flash, it can’t follow links inside it, so make sure to make your navigation in plain old HTML.

b) Large images. Large images mean less text and lengthy download times. Some sites also put text content in images, text which may add to keyword density.

c) Frames. A lot of search engines cannot index web pages embedded in frames and it is wise to avoid them entirely. Placing your navigation on each page is definitely a better approach, as it not only allows search engines to easily crawl your site, but also helps improve your ranking by proliferating anchor text in your site.

d) Javascript. Links using Javascript are not crawled by most search engines and should be avoided.

e) Dynamic pages. Non-html pages like asp, aspx, php, cfm are generally not indexed by a lot of search engines. Do not place important content on such pages. It is also important to note that some sites that provide reciprocal links use dynamically generated back-links which are not indexed by search engines, thereby nullifying the advantage of having an external link. Make sure that links pointing to your site are in plain HTML.