seo practices

[GUJUm0deL]

Hey all, my company wants to look into better SEO practices, especially when dealing with google. Any ideas/suggestions? Any good reading materials out there that will help? What practices have worked for you and your site?

We're not going to be using META tags and META keywords since they are archiac.

____________________________________
Just Imagine.

http://www.imajinarts.com

 

[1DMF]

have you joined the google webmasters?

created a robots.txt file and sitemap XML?

"In complete darkness we are all the same, only our knowledge and wisdom separates us, don't let your eyes deceive you.

 

[Foamcow]

Good key phrase research

Good quality backlinks - i.e. relevant sites with good ranking

Page titles

Link text

Well written content, and don't skimp on the words!

<honk>*:O)</honk>
Designease Ltd. - polyprop folders, ring binders and creative presentation ideas
Earl & Thompson Marketing - Marketing Agency Services in Gloucestershire

 

[GUJUm0deL]

Hi, thanks for the help.

Our content is very well written.
Our page titles are are clear as they can get
Our links are some texts (with meaningful words) and images with meaningful alt attributes.

Maybe if I rephrased my question, that might help. I know the basics of how to get better ranking:
have validated code (check against w3c validator)
have alt (or title) attributes to your elements
have well written content
check links for any borken or misplaced linkages

But what I was looking for was how to beter use keywords to get better page ranking. And, how to get google, msn, yahoo, et al better spider or index our site.

I searched on google for 'better seo practices' and the results all pointed to common sense facts, I was looking for something like how to implement seo changes onto an already exisiting site.

____________________________________
Just Imagine.

http://www.imajinarts.com

 

[Foamcow]

have validated code (check against w3c validator)

Not necessarily.

have alt (or title) attributes to your elements

Not necessarily - they are actually of rather minor influence.

check links for any borken or misplaced linkages

Not really an SEO issue.


The things that really matter are links to your pages and the title tags of those pages (note: tags, not attributes).

Providing your internal links are plain HTML links then all spiders will be able to access and index your pages.

Using semantic markup can help (perhaps this is where the validated code idea comes from). But it doesn't help becuase it validates, but rather because it gives [em]context[/em] to your key words.

For example. A key phrase in an <h1> tag is 'worth more' than the same phrase in a <p> tag. Then again, the benefits are only minor influences.

Write natural page titles using your targeted key phrase(s) for that page.

Try to get incoming links to your site to use the key phrases targeted by the page they link to.

Your page ranking is calculated using these criteria (amongst others). Recent tweaks I've made to client sites built by others have taken them from obscurity to page 1. These pages don't validate and are not linked too that much. The changes I made involved using proper titles and puttnig the correct tags around headings. (previously they were all <span class="heading"> kind of things.

Much SEO is about common sense.



<honk>*:O)</honk>
Designease Ltd. - polyprop folders, ring binders and creative presentation ideas
Earl & Thompson Marketing - Marketing Agency Services in Gloucestershire

 

[ChrisHirst]

HR Tips for New SEOs

But what I was looking for was how to beter use keywords to get better page ranking. And, how to get google, msn, yahoo, et al better spider or index our site.

Forget about ranking for ranking sake, what you need to be looking at is keyphrases that will rank and convert


Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
Woo Hoo! the cobblers kids get new shoes.
People Counting Systems

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

 

[GUJUm0deL]

ChrisHirst, we have a content manager who is very good at writing content for the web site. She gets right down to the point and doesn't use fancy technical terms and jargons (I work for a major financial institution now). From what I'm seeing in my search is that the best type of content is the type that explains what you're selling in easy to understand words.

what you need to be looking at is keyphrases that will rank and convert

So then next logical question, how does one go about getting better at writing keyphrases?

Thanks for the link, will look into that.

____________________________________
Just Imagine.

http://www.imajinarts.com

 

[ChrisHirst]

From what I'm seeing in my search is that the best type of content is the type that explains what you're selling in easy to understand words.

Definitely. Providing, of course you are using words and phrases that users are typing in to find the services you offer.

Do some keyword research with WordTracker or Keyword Discovery to find useful phrases. Analyse your site logs to find the "long tail" phrases that visitors use to find the pages and capitalise on those. Use a Google Adwords (PPC) campaign to find words and phrases that are used then write copy and optimise pages around those.

don't get tempted by the garbage spewed out by the Overture keyword tool, their data is so badly skewed now it's utterly worthless.

Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
Woo Hoo! the cobblers kids get new shoes.
People Counting Systems

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

 

[joebest]

i would recommend you check your pages in a keyword density analyser such as the one at

http://www.ranks.nl

you'd be looking for a density of between 8-10% on the main keyword/phrase and a prominence of at least 70. other than that good links are the key as the guys have said. I wouldn't bother with adwords/overture unless you have money to burn, organic listing is much more trusted by users.

 

[SBTBILL]

I've recently discovered something called Urchin that is a free service with Verio. This gives a list of key word phrases that have been used to find the site. It is very interesting. Also tells the bots that have searched it and a lot of other statistics.

What I'm looking for now is how to add it to sites not hosted by Verio.

Bill Couture
http:\\

http://www.sbtbill.com

 

[ecobb]

Urchin's been around for about a decade, but in 2005 they were bought by Google and renamed Google Analytics.

http://www.google.com/analytics

Hope This Helps!

ECAR
ECAR Technologies

http://www.ecartech.com

"My work is a game, a very serious game." - M.C. Escher

 

[ChrisHirst]

Ignore TOTALLY the imaginary "metric" of "keyword density"



Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
Woo Hoo! the cobblers kids get new shoes.
People Counting Systems

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

 

[joebest]

ChrisHirst- Can you explain that? If I'm wasting my time i'd rather know about it..
thanks,
joe

 

[1DMF]

Chris is saying that just because your page has the word "computers" 5,000 times on the page, it doesn't mean you will get a higher ranking for the keyword "computers".

Infact some search engines will mark it against you if they see your page as trying to use these tactics to get higher rankings.

take my site for example, I have a page 1 ranking for "dance music community" on google and until the other day when I added my meta tags, the main thing that contained this phrase was the page <title> tag.

<title> can carry a lot of weight with google, so bear this in mind when giving your pages a title.

"In complete darkness we are all the same, only our knowledge and wisdom separates us, don't let your eyes deceive you.

 

[ChrisHirst]

Think about it for a little while;

Your page needs two words = 50% should you add some more random words to get it down to some imaginary percentage?

There simply is no such arbiraty numerical absolute that should be adhered to, Write your copy naturally and for real visitors.



Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
Woo Hoo! the cobblers kids get new shoes.
People Counting Systems

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

 

[joebest]

hmm, good point about the 50%... still not convinced it does not make a difference though. i optimised my old web design site (

http://www.exertion-uk.com,

keyphrase "exeter web design") with specific density and a number of client sites in a similar way (

http://www.tutors-online.co.uk,

keyword "tutors") and it seemed to work fairly well.
but i can't say for sure what i did was right or wrong, (or imaginary) as maybe the links (and flowing, poetic copy on the pages) accounted for any decent position achieved. but it is a good point though.

 

[jstreich]

Also think about this, SEO is about only about getting people to the site. Even if you reach a certian percent of the site being some key phrase, will it keep visitors to read something that looks like

Welcome to [red]keyword phrase[/red]! We're the best company at [red]keyword phrase[/red]. We would love you to use us as your personal [red]keyword phrase[/red].

Let's say the keyword phrase is 2 words long.
23 total words.
6 of them are the words in the keyword phrase you're looking to market.

You have 6/23 which is more than 25% of your text. Great, search engines know what the site is about, but people coming to your site don't know:

1. If your any good at anything other than repeating yourself.

2. They will be annoyed and insulted that your page doesn't provide any data on the keyword, just uses it a lot.

3. Search rank may raise (may not), but so will your bounce rate (also a statistic that doesn't tell you much).

If you write your site naturally, your text will naturally contain real keywords. People and bot "reading" the site will get a better feel. Real content, and not stats, is the king of SEO.

[plug=shameless]

http://game-master.us/phpx-3.4.0/

[/plug]

 

[ChrisHunt]

you'd be looking for a density of between 8-10% on the main keyword/phrase

Ignore TOTALLY the imaginary "metric" of "keyword density" [...] Your page needs two words = 50% should you add some more random words?

I don't see how that tells us anything. If you have a page with just two words on it, it's unlikely to rank for anything - even the two words in question. For all we know, it could hit a 50% keyword density rule along with the "it's just a blank page with two frikken words on it" rule that would keep it out of the index.

The best advice is always to write your copy for people and let the spiders look after themselves. I think people generally don't react well to prose where the same keyword is repeated excessively, and I wouldn't bet against Google encoding that view into its algorithm in terms of a "keyword density" factor.

No need to faff around measuring density though. Just read your copy (or get a friend to), and if it sounds unnatural, it needs fixing.

-- Chris Hunt
Webmaster & Tragedian
Extra Connections Ltd