If you looked into Denver search engine optimization (SEO) in the last couple of years, you probably got a bunch of information about keywords. You learned a lot of ways, some of them a bit tricky, for maximizing the keywords on your website so as to improve your ranking on the . . . → Read More: Keyword Density and Search Engine Optimization]]> Keyword Density and Search Engine Optimization

If you looked into Denver search engine optimization (SEO) in the last couple of years, you probably got a bunch of information about keywords. You learned a lot of ways, some of them a bit tricky, for maximizing the keywords on your website so as to improve your ranking on the search engine results pages. Keywords have been around for a while now as little tools for making the content of your page look attractive to the software, called spiders or web crawlers, that major search engines use to find relevant sites to match user’s search terms.

Ways to Use Keywords

There are several ways that sites use keywords to get a boost in the rankings, and not all of them are legitimate anymore. Here are the basics:

•Content – You cram as many keywords into your content on each page as possible. This usually meant up to fifteen or twenty keywords per page, and that is a lot of keywords. When a user read the page, they were inundated with words that matched what they were looking for. Unfortunately, the content itself was seldom as useful as it could be since it was more focused on keyword density than on helpful information.
•META tags and alt tags – These are the keyword placement opportunities found in the HTML code of each page on your site. The search engine spiders would crawl through this code and look for matching terms. So even if you didn’t talk about a particular topic on one page, your META tags could claim you did and draw visitors. Alt tags are the same thing but for images.
•Page titles and descriptions – If you could get the right combination of keywords in your page titles and the brief descriptions embedded in your source code, you could get the attention of search engine spiders. So Denver search engine optimization teams were suggesting some pretty keyword dense titles and descriptions that were not necessarily accurate or useful to the visitor.

Keyword Evolution

Today, these are still valid placements for keywords. You can use them in your content, place them in your page titles and descriptions, and embed them in your HTML code in the form of META tags and alt tags. The difference in the most recent search engine software changes and the spiders of old is the type of keyword use they are looking for. More is not always better today. In fact, a bunch of keywords crammed onto a page of useless content will not boost your ranking, rather it might lower it.

Instead, search engine spiders are looking for keywords that occur naturally in the text of a website. For search engine optimization, Denver businesses are going back to the natural way of presenting information on the web. Articles with useful information, META tags and alt tags that accurately describe what’s on the page, and titles and descriptions that direct a user easily to the information they need. These are the SEO methods that work now with major search engines like Google.

So when you’re thinking about SEO, natural is the keyword of the moment

If you repeat your keywords with every other word on every line, then your site will probably be rejected as . . . → Read More: Keyword Density]]> Keyword density is an indicator of the number of times the selected keyword appears in the web page. But mind you, keywords shouldn’t be over used, but should be just sufficient enough to appear at important places.

If you repeat your keywords with every other word on every line, then your site will probably be rejected as an artificial site or spam site.

Keyword density is always expressed as a percentage of the total word content on a given web page.

Suppose you have 100 words on your webpage (not including HMTL code used for writing the web page), and you use a certain keyword for five times in the content. The keyword density on that page is got by simply dividing the total number of keywords, by the total number of words that appear on your web page. So here it is 5 divided by 100 = .05. Because keyword density is a percentage of the total word count on the page, multiply the above by 100, that is 0.05 x 100 = 5%

The accepted standard for a keyword density is between 3% and 5%, to get recognized by the search engines and you should never exceed it.

Remember, that this rule applies to every page on your site. It also applies to not just to one keyword but also a set of keywords that relates to a different product or service. The keyword density should always be between 3% and 5%.

Simple steps to check the density:

1. Copy and paste the content from an individual web page into a word-processing software program like Word or Word Perfect.

2. Go to the ‘Edit’ menu and click ‘Select All’. Now go to the ‘Tools’ menu and select ‘Word Count’. Write down the total number of words in the page.

3. Now select the ‘Find’ function on the ‘Edit’ menu. Go to the ‘Replace’ tab and type in the keyword you want to find. ‘Replace’ that word with the same word, so you don’t change the text.

4.0 When you complete the replace function, the system will provide a count of the words you replaced. That gives the number of times you have used the keyword in that page.

5. Using the total word count for the page and the total number of keywords you can now calculate the keyword density.

I have a page of my backpacking site optimized for the term “dirtbagging.” I think I get half the world traffic . . . → Read More: Keyword Advice]]> Online “experts” are always offering conflicting keyword advice. This is because different keywords are good for different reasons. Once you know the factors involved, you can decide which ones are best for your web site.

I have a page of my backpacking site optimized for the term “dirtbagging.” I think I get half the world traffic for that keyword, but that only means ten visitors a month. I was new to online marketing when I put up that page. Obviously you need decent keyword demand to get much traffic, but demand is just one factor.

My Keyword Advice

1. Make sure there is enough total demand for a keyword. This will vary according to the nature of your site. If you are making a few cents per visitor an average, you need more traffic than sites that average a dollar per visitor. I won’t optimize for a keyword that is searched less than a few hundred times per month.

2. Look at keyword demand/supply ratios. Last month there were 289,000 searches for “fishing,” but with 35 million results showing up on a Google search for the term, can you compete? Probably not. A Keyword term like “bass fishing tips,” with 3,700 searches, and 31,000 results is a more likely winner.

3. Consider total supply. Google shows 300 results for “dirtbagging,” 15 times the 20 monthly searches for the term. Still, it is easy to get on the first page of results for the term. A keyword with a demand of a million, and a million search results has a better ratio, but can you really get on the first page of search results? Whatever the ratio, you have to be able to compete against the total supply. Nobody will find you on the tenth page of results.

4. Consider the type of keyword. Good search engine placement is one thing, but what type of visitor are you getting? Who’s more likely to buy something or click on your affiliate links, a searcher for “fishing stories,” or “fishing poles?” You’d probably make more money with the second term, even if it had half the traffic.

5. Look for keyword variations. I later found there was even more traffic for “brainpower.” I have since optimized for both. By the way, both spellings are in the dictionary. Look for odd search phrases too, but be careful about optimizing for misspellings and bad-grammar keywords, if it might hurt the reputation of your site.

5. Consider the value of keyword ads. If you rely partly on pay-per click advertising, like Google’s Adsense program, for revenue, you may want to consider the ads that will be diplayed for a given keyword. Ads for “surveilance cameras,” pay four times as much per click as those for “hidden cameras.”

6. Consider your interest and expertise in the topic represented by the keyword. Do you want to write a page on that topic? Can you deliver what a searcher of that term is looking for? Giving real value while doing something you enjoy – that’s my final keyword advice.

Utilizing your website as your business tool is simultaneously an art and a science. To learn it, there are a few key tips. . . . → Read More: Key Tips for Attracting Visitors to Your Site]]> Building a website is one thing, publicizing it is other. There are so many WebPages with good quality content, which are never read by the appropriate people because of low rankings and unattractive features.

Utilizing your website as your business tool is simultaneously an art and a science. To learn it, there are a few key tips. Those are very important to look in your site, so that it comes in more views and attracts more visitors.

HomePage: Keep it easy and simple: —

1. Do not put all the information on the home page of your site. It causes confusion in visitor’s mind. Have tips and roots with just enough descriptions, so that visitor finds root of everything they demand.
2. Home page should be looking like the center of the site from where, a visitor can go anywhere in easy steps of clicks.
3. Home page can contain some of the most important products of your business, which are the centralized attraction of you firm or website.
4. Do not overcrowd your homepage with the words; there must be brief content, which is navigating, informative and not too much to read.
5. Few striking lines like- “ most comfortable for beginners” or “Step by step learning guide for novice” are good to put with you products.

Links: –

1. There should be links on your home page so that every visitor finds it very easy to reach directly any section he wants. Never put other sites link with those otherwise your visitor can be diverted from you site.
2. A proper made and attractive sitemap is very necessary for the website; it gives the facility to novice as well as expert users to watch whole details of your site at once. In addition, the site maps are very necessary to be submitted to all main search engines so you get traffic from the search engines as well.
3. Links of other sites are very necessary because those links increases your ranking in search engines. Those links should be put in the lower parts of you pages or with the product details, where the link provides the relevant site.

Content: –

Web Content is the life of Website. Web Content is the most important factor in attracting more visitors to your site. Here are things to look in it: –

1. The competition between the same product websites is chiefly won by the best quality web content. Visitors find it easy to understand and like to use the same site repeatedly. Even such visitors like to tell the site address to their friends and family, so that others also use the facility and it results into permanent visitors of you site.
2. Keywords and links are necessary to increase you ranking,, but it must be looked that your content is not compromising with the quality for other reasons.
3. Content should be brief and effective, it should offer all information in less words. It should not be so brief that it results in a tough to understand content and visitors deflect.
4. It should always be relevant to your website and products.
5. Content should not be describing history, technical details, and greatness of inventors or irrelevant absurd. Visitors come to use the site as shop. They do not like education until the site is a guiding one, E-book site or explanation website.

Search Engine Optimization: –

Even A perfect Website cannot get enough visitors, until it is not related to the big Internet linkage system.

1. Most of the visitors come to your site by the search engines or the ads you provide on others sites.
The biggest number of you visitors is from the search engines.

2. The website should be submitted to all big search engines.

3. The website should contain keyword rich and links rich contain so that it results in higher search engine ranking and attract more visitors.

4. You should decide the keywords by assuming, what your visitors will type, when they will need to find a site like yours one.

5. Links also higher the ranking of your website, so put the relevant links on your pages, which adds more arms in the octopus of your site’s connections. The bigger the octopus, easier it is to reach for the spiders and robots of search engines.

Ads: –

1. Ads are always very important in marketing. Your ads should be appearing on all the relevant main websites, where your visitors have a large probability to go.
2. Ad should have a strong punch line, which appeals the visitor. It should not have wordy outline, but just some lines should be creating fascination and suspense as if you provide some thing very important.

Other tips: -

There are some more things which are important in getting visitors to your website.

1. The URL of the website should be easy to remember and better if it is attractive, so visitors put it on their tong easily.
2. There should be availability to bookmark your website. Once a visitor bookmarks you, you get a permanent customer.
3. Website should be regularly updating, people like to see new things whenever they enters the site again.
4. You should learn and understand the traffic increasing tips and procedures also, and should go to increase traffic.

Those are the main basic tip, which helps you to get visitors to your site and to increase your product’s sell as well as improve you business in this E-age.

I have . . . → Read More: Keeping Your Text Links Natural]]> After the latest Google Search Engine Ranking Position (SERP) update, many websites that focused too heavily on one keyword lost ground in the SERPs. When it comes to Google’s latest search engine algorithm, if you are buying or trading text links it is becoming more important than ever to mix up your preferred anchor text.

I have always recommended focusing on 4 or 5 “money” keyword phrases you would like to target. Now, to take things a step further, I recommend you consider breaking down each of those keyword phrases into an additional 3 or 4 semantically similar keyword phrases. If you have a Pay-Per-Click account, an excellent way to determine what keywords are your most potent is to study ROI patterns within your account.

The main rule of thumb is to keep your anchor text as natural as possible. This means a wide variety of links to your site from sites in your general category, with a scattering of links from unrelated sites. Run-of-Site (ROS) links are fine as long as they are not overused. After all, one or two ROS links could be something that could occur naturally if you have a great site with valuable content.

Most importantly, increase the incoming links to your site gradually – don’t go from 5 inbound links to 50,000 links overnight. Use common sense and don’t do anything that could raise a red flag with the search engines. For new sites, we recommend that you increase your total backlink count by no more than 25% to 50% each month.

As it stands now, MSN and Yahoo lag behind Google in their ability to identify natural linking patterns. So if you are focusing on non-Google search engines, the more links with the same exact anchor text the better. In fact, many webmasters have actually set up a second site to sell their product through MSN and Yahoo searches while keeping their Google centric site running at the same time.

Google does minor algorithm updates almost on a monthly . . . → Read More: Jagger Algorithm Update Part-1]]> If there is one thing Search Engine Marketers and website owners fear – it is a major algorithm update, especially by Google. Well, much as we may like it not to happen, its here. Google has recently done a major algorithm update, nick named “Jagger” update series.

Google does minor algorithm updates almost on a monthly basis and once in a while, it implements a major algorithm update. The last major Google algorithm update happened in November 2003 called the Florida update, which created quite a stir with website rankings. To know more, read our article on Google Florida Algo Update.

Like the Florida update, the Jagger update has done the much feared “blender” act. It has churned the top-ranking websites and turned it into a list of unrecognizable pulp.

Google has been a hot-favorite amongst the web community searching for information. Most feel that the search results have always been highly relevant. It would be therefore safe to assume that whatever algorithm Google has, works just fine. So why does Google need to re-engineer its perfect-looking algo so drastically? Has it not heard the saying don’t fix what aint broke”? From Google’s standpoint, the reason is simple and valid. Well, for starters, web is ever-evolving and the algo always need to be adjusted in order to provide the best of results. Google engineered an algo, which it believes will reward good sites and rank them well for its viewers.

Google, like most other search engines, keeps this algo a closely guarded secret to prevent it from being exploited. However, the SEO community is constantly at work trying to rank their sites well. Using calculated guesswork, logical thinking, special tests and extensive trial-and-error methods, they gradually figure out what the algorithm likes and dislikes. Armed with this knowledge, it is not difficult to work on websites to rank them high in SERP (Search Engine Result Pages), irrespective of whether the site deserves to rank at the top or not. This kind of algorithm abuse results in ‘less than desirable’ websites displacing good sites from the top ranks, contaminating the Google index. Consequently, following the Kaizen philosophy, Google needs to re-engineer its algorithms to keep, what it believes are bad sites, out of its top ranks. Naturally, major algorithm updates upset the current high-ranking websites & sends a lot of SEO professionals back to their work-bench in order to start all over again.

What is interesting to note is the timing of the algorithm update. When Google updated its algorithm in November 2003, there were large scale allegations by website owners that Google intentionally upset the rankings of popular websites just before the Christmas shopping season to force them into buying Google AdWords paid advertising in order to sustain the visitor traffic. While Google claims that the algo update decisions are not influenced by the AdWords team, it is difficult to understand why they would once again choose a critical timing just before Christmas shopping season to update their algorithm. The stakes are very high and its business after all. Google earned $1.57 Billion in Q3 of 2005. If 2003 pre-Christmas algorithm update effect is any indication, I estimate that Google would record revenues of over $2.05 Billion in Q4 of 2005.

Jagger

First, let’s discuss Jagger… Just like hurricanes, Google updates have names. (A Google update is a change to the way Google determines its rankings. Google makes these changes periodically, and they’re universally feared . . . → Read More: Jagger, Google Analytics, and the Future of Search & SEO]]> Two big things have just happened in Google-land: Jagger and Google Analytics. Together, these two events may have changed the face of search forever.

Jagger

First, let’s discuss Jagger… Just like hurricanes, Google updates have names. (A Google update is a change to the way Google determines its rankings. Google makes these changes periodically, and they’re universally feared because they can impact dramatically on a website’s ranking.) The latest update is called Jagger, and it has search engine optimizers (SEOs) all around the world in a state of panic.

Why was Jagger such a fearful update? Simple… With Jagger, Google once again outsmarted huge numbers of SEOs. You see, many/most SEOs spend their time (and their clients’ money) trying to trick Google into thinking that their websites are more relevant and important than they really are. They do this mostly by swapping links, buying cheap links, and placing links on free directories. While there’s nothing wrong with these sorts of links (i.e. they’re not considered ‘black-hat’), they don’t really show that the site is relevant or important. All they really show is that the site owner has made a deal with another site owner. In these deals, the incentive for the linking site owner is a reciprocal link, money, or increased link volume. Google much prefers it when the linking site adds the link simply to enhance the value of their content or to increase their own credibility and authority.

In other words, Google wants its search results to contain relevant, important sites, not sites that merely appear to be relevant and important. To this end, Google invests millions of dollars and employs the world’s smartest mathematicians to create algorithms which identify sites that are trying to trick them. And that’s exactly what Jagger did; and when it found those sites, it simply adjusted their ranking to more accurately reflect their true importance. (Unfortunately, it also demoted some sites which actually deserve a high ranking. It is hoped that these mistakes will be ironed out with future minor updates, but that’s a topic for another article…)

From a technical standpoint, Jagger was well described by Ken Webster in his article, ‘Google’s Jagger Update – Dust Begins To Settle?’ . To summarize, Jagger:
1) Increased importance placed on IBL (Inbound Links) Relevancy?
2) Increased importance placed on OBL (Outbound Links) Relevancy?
3) Promotion of relevant Niche Directories (related to #1 & #2)?
4) More weight thrown back to PR @ top domain?
5) Increased importance on AdSense placement relevancy?
6) Possible introduction of CSS Spam filtering?
7) Overall Blog demotions?
New and unresolved “canonical” issues?

Some more interesting effects were reported by WG Moore who runs a number of test sites for SEO purposes. By monitoring the links to his test sites as reported by Google, he established that:

“all reciprocal links had vanished. We think that this is because Google is down-grading or eliminating reciprocal links as a measure of popularity. This does make sense, actually. Reciprocal links are a method of falsifying popularity. Sort of a cheap method of buying a link, if you want to think of it that way… During the second week of the Jagger Update, a few of our reciprocal links did come back up. However, we also noticed that these were from places where we had highly relevant content. They came from articles where we discussed our area of expertise: Web Analytics, or from forums where we had relevant threads. So we feel that these links came back because of content, not linking.

The other group that came back up was one-way inbound text links, regardless of the originating web site. These links also had strong relevance to our web analytics business. In other words, they contained keywords and/or phrases related to our site and its business.”

In short, Jagger undid the hard work of thousands – if not millions – of people! As a result, hard-won high rankings and revenues plummeted.

Interestingly, article PR (article submission) came through Jagger seemingly unscathed. For example, went from no.4 to no.1 worldwide for “copywriter”, and I’ve employed article PR almost exclusively. Whether it was promoted or the sites around it were demoted, one thing is clear: article PR is one of the best ways to obtain a high ranking.

Google Analytics

The second monumental event to occur recently was Google Analytics – http://www.google.com/analytics/index.html . Google Analytics is a free web-stats solution which not only reports all the regular site stats, but also integrates directly with Google AdWords giving webmasters and insight into the ROI of their pay-per-click ads. According to Google, ” Google Analytics tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site.”

Why is this such a landmark move? Because for the first time ever, Google will have access to your real web stats. And these stats will be far more accurate than those provided by Alexa – http://www.alexa.com . Furthermore, Google’s privacy statement says: ” We may also use personal information for auditing, research and analysis to operate and improve Google technologies and services.” – http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacy.html . Now let’s put two and two together:
1) Google is ‘giving’ every webmaster in the world free access to quality web-stats.
2) Millions of webmasters will accept this ‘gift’, if only because it integrates directly with their Google AdWords campaigns.
3) Google will then have full access to the actual web stats of millions of commercial websites.
4) Google will have the right to use these stats to develop new technologies.
5) What’s the next logical step? Google will use these statistics to help determine its rankings, of course!

It should come as no surprise. It’s been on the cards – and frequently discussed – for a long time. For example, Jayde Online CEO, Mel Strocen, recently published an article on this very topic, ‘ The Future of WebSite Ranking’ . She quite rightly asserts that:

“Google’s “democratic” vision of the Web will never be achieved by manipulating algorithm criteria based on content. It will only be achieved by factoring in what is important to people, and people will always remain the best judge of what that is. The true challenge for search engines in the future is how to incorporate web searcher input and preferences into their ranking algorithms.”

In fact, the Jayde Online network already owns and operates a search engine, ExactSeek which incorporates user popularity statistics in its rankings.

The Future of Search & SEO

To date, ExactSeek is the only search engine which uses visitor stats as criteria for its rankings. But Google isn’t far behind. We all know that Google specializes in taking a good idea and implementing and adapting it brilliantly. This is exactly what we’ll see in this case. By combining link popularity and user popularity statistics, Google will be the only major search engine to consider both what other sites think of your website and what your visitors think of your website. And because they have the most advanced algorithms for assessing link popularity, and will soon have access to the farthest reaching, most accurate web stats to assess user popularity, its competitors will be a long time catching up.

So if that’s the future of search, what’s the future of SEO? The future of SEO is undoubtedly one where:
• one-way text links from relevant pages continue to be the most valuable links
• reciprocal linking continue to decline
• the ‘shotgun’ approach to link buying declines
• mass email link requests decline
• free directory submission declines
• niche directory submission increases
• article PR (article submission) increases
• article submission sites (e.g. EzineArticles, GoArticles) play a much bigger and more important role in helping online publishers locate quality articles (due to the increasing article volume)
• user popularity is just as important as link popularity, which means:
o the quality of article PR improves in order to increase site traffic, credibility, and loyalty
o the quality of website content improves in order to convert traffic and encourage repeat visits

Clearly, the choices for SEOs will be pretty much limited to paying for links at niche sites and/or engaging in article PR. Being an SEO copywriter, I may be a little biased, but for mine, article PR is the hands-down winner in this comparison:
• It satisfies Google’s criteria for relevance and importance. Linking site owners include your article and link because, in doing so, their site becomes more useful to visitors, and their business gains credibility and authority.
• It generates hundreds of free links quickly enough to make it worth your while, but not so quickly as to raise red flags at Google (in the form of link dampening).
• Links are permanent and you don’t have to pay to keep them there.
• You get a lot of qualified referred traffic who already trust you and your expertise. This satisfies Google’s visitor popularity criteria, while at the same time bringing you a lot of extra customers.

Conclusion

The lesson from Jagger is, don’t try and trick Google! They’ve got more money and more brains than virtually any company in the world. It’ll only end in tears! Don’t spend time and money trying to make your site look important and relevant. Instead, spend that time and money actually making it important and relevant! Content – the real content behind the optimization – is the answer. After all, whether it’s an article or a web page, it’s the content that keeps ‘eyes on paper’, and that’s what it’s all about.

Happy optimizing!