10 SEO steps to follow
March 4, 2009 by Eric
Filed under Blogging Tips
There is no mistaking the power of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). There are millions and millions of dollars spent every month on SEO efforts. Why so much? Well because SEO pays off. The process of approaching, implementing, maintaining and monitoring an SEO effort is often a difficult task. However, if you take your approach one step at a time and keep informed of search engine guidelines, you would be smooth sailing. Just going through the motions will not get your site on that sought after first page in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). In fact if you’re not careful you can get carried away with your SEO efforts and get your site booted right off the SERPs. To avoid that make sure you study up a bit before you commit to an SEO campaign.
With that being said I have put together what I find to be the 5 most important SEO efforts. These are not necessarily in order of importance, but if you follow these 5 steps you will have taken that first step to attaining SEO stardom.
- Title – The titles of your pages should contain the keywords in which you are optimizing the page. This is the first thing that the search engine robots, crawlers and spiders look at. Your title tags (<title> </title>) should be located near the top of the page coding in between the head tags. Your titles should be no longer than 100 characters, however Google will truncate the title if it is more than 60 characters including spaces. So unless you don’t mind your title being cut off with a … then have at it.
- Keywords – A title means nothing without keywords. Keywords are what drive an SEO campaign and fuel your sites success. Keywords are a tricky business though so take your time, research your keywords and make sure you select keywords that are in your niche. Often times webmasters will not take much time in this area and just plug in the words that they would like to rate high in. For example, Joe has a website soliciting his carpet cleaning business so for lack of knowing any better, his site is geared toward the key phrase “carpet cleaner”. The problem with this is that the competition in this key phrase is very high and to reach the first page Joe will have to compete big names to be seen. Now this is not impossible but it is a bit far fetched for Joe to even attract his target market. Perhaps Joe should stick with a key phrase like ‘carpet cleaner Oakland CA’ or ‘bonnet cleaning Oakland CA’.
- Body text – The body of your text should contain your keywords. The keywords should not be over used to avoid keyword spamming, which could get your site booted from Google and other search engines. Your “keyword density” should be balanced just right, if it is too low you may not get the optimum results where if it is to high then your page might be hit with a keyword spamming charge. Google is by far has the lowest keyword density tolerance, which is right around 2%. Yahoo and MSN are considerably higher at possibly 5%. There is no magic number here but I can tell you that it is not as many times as you can get the keywords on the page.
- Heading Tags – Make sure that your heading tags contain your keywords, ideally the <h1> tag should be right up there at the beginning of the page. Ideally the first thing in the <body> tag should be an <h1> tag that has your title. But we live in a world where we need Headers and nav bars, so the idea here is get the titles up as close as possible in the page.
- URL – If at all possible get your keywords into the url. For instance if your keywords for a particular page are shopping concierge, then you may want to name the page something like shopping_concierge.html (or .php or whatever). Additionally if you have the opportunity you should consider getting a domain name that contains your keywords. To continue with the concierge example, let’s pretend the concierge company’s name is ‘Butler Concierge’ and that they are located in Fort Worth Texas. It would make sense to the average person to choose a domain name like butlerconcierge.com, however this company should consider a domain like fortworthconcierge.com. Search engines also use the domain name as an SEO qualifier so keep that in mind when choosing your domain names.
- Links – Make sure there are no broken links in your site. Often times search engine algorithms see a site with broken links as incomplete or just not worth finishing so the overall rating of the site is affected. Also stay away from the SO tempting “click here” link, for instance ‘To get a quote on auto insurance, click here’. Where “click here” is the link. Instead try ‘FREE AUTO INSURANCE QUOTE’. Where the entire sentence is a link. The reason you want to stay away from “click here” is that when Google or Yahoo’s or whoever’s robots, crawlers and spiders come through they will recognize that the ‘auto insurance quote’ page is linked to the text “click here” rather than the key words for that page. Thus making your link useless.
- Inbound links – Inbound links are paramount to the rating of your site. These links should be from sites that are of high quality. The higher the rating of the sites that link to yours, the higher search engines will rate you, in the light that quality sites think you have quality content and think your site is worth linking to. Getting inbound links are the hardest part of SEO by far and remember you can pay for quantity but quality is often compromised in this action. When getting your inbound links try to have the site Webmaster insert your links using the keywords like mentioned in number 6.
- Flow – Remember, the reason you are trying to get your website to the top is because you want people to come to the site and look at your content, buy what your selling… etc., Don’t get so involved in SEO that your web site is not legible. What I am saying is design your site (as best as possible) for the robots, spiders, crawlers and your users. You don’t want to lose your users because you are tailoring your site so strictly for the search engines. Remember the bounce rate (the time your users spend on your site) is a part of SEO as well.
- Patience is a virtue – Be patient, SEO campaigns are not for those who are instant gratification junkies. Give your site about three months to sink in. Check your analytics program to see how the site is doing and adjust accordingly. Keep your efforts simple; make a minimal amount of changes so that you can accurately see what works and what doesn’t.
- Updates – Finally, stay on top of things. Keep an eye on the search engine guidelines to ensure your SEO is always up to date. The last thing you want is for your long sought efforts to slowly wash down the drain as technology advances.
There are many other things to consider when engaging in your SEO campaign and others that even deserve to be right up here with these, however I want to give you the basics and provide a solid direction to follow. Remember, to study up on these actions before actually implementing these. I would hate to see anyone say “Well I was reading this article that said I should include my keywords in my body text, so I just repeated the words over and over, made them the same color as the background so no one would see them. I don’t know why I can’t find my site on Google any more” Guys, that’s been done and the out come is not good. I promise.
Plagiarism and Copyright Infringements - Do’s & Don’ts
March 4, 2009 by Candace Robinson
Filed under Events
Join Az Real Estate Blogging Network and SAAR for our next meeting on March 10th, 2009 with special guest, Jonathan Bailey. An expert on plagiarism and copyright infringements. Come learn all about plagiarism and how it works. Jonathan Bailey is from New Orleans, LA with a BA in Journalism and Mass Comm, 2002, University of South Carolina. Jonathan will share his story and enlighten us of the pitfalls of plagiarism and the Do’s and Don’t’s.
Jonathan’s personal experience of plagiarism of his poetry and literature was being stolen for over six years. His journey and experience forced him to become knowledgeable to learn to fight back and not allow his work to be stolen any longer.
As a result of fighting back and gaining the knowledge to do so has given him the ability to help others fight again plagiarism.
Jonathan will help us understand the signs and warn us of the pitfalls of plagiarism today. The risks of plagiarism and how to go about putting a stop to keep from having anyone plagiarize your content.
Through Jonathan’s own experience he has been able to share advice and guide others through his personal site at Plagiarism Today.
Come join us for our March Meetup to learn about content theft, copyright infringement and plagiarism.
Date: March 10, 2009
Time: 10:00 a.m - 12:00 p.m
Where: Scottsdale Area Association of REALTORS®
4221 North Scottsdale Road
Scottsdale, AZ 85251
(480) 945-2651
We will be live streaming Jonathan in through Skype to ask questions and get the answers we all need to know and be prepared to take charge.
This is a very popular topic and hope you can find the time to meet up for the two hours set aside to tackle a very difficult but important subject. You won’t want to miss this event!
Be sure to RSVP and save your spot!
Be sure to follow Jonathan Bailey on Twitter @plagiarismtoday
