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Putting Your Company on the Map

Hardik  Nayak
Hardik Nayak
Marketing Manager

Search engine optimization (SEO in short) is basically comprised by two fundamental strategies:

1) On site SEO

2) Off site SEO

We will examine both aspects in the following paragraphs, focusing first on factors strictly inherent to the web pages in the domain, how they are linked together and we will follow on how to make the site popular and "trusted" on the World Wide Web. Because of the difference in how the different search engines rank web sites, we will determine only the common factors. Very often, the same SEO strategy works in the long term on all engines.

On Site SEO

The first step is to take a look at how the web site is designed. This is an extremely important factor in how the search engines can "read" and rank the site. Let's start with how search engines visit your company' s site and read it to analyze content, navigational structure etc.

-The spiders/robots

Search engines send out what is commonly called "spiders" or "robots" (these are interchangeable definitions) . Although these words sound fascinating and invoke images of little "creatures" crawling the internet, a robot is nothing more than search engine automated software reading a web site partially or in its entirety. This takes us to the next step:

-Make your site spider friendly

The way a spider reads a web page is different from what a human observes when visiting a site. The spider cannot see images, it has a hard time following web pages with frames or following a link with a long string of characters that may change over time because of "dynamic content". On site SEO has to address these issues. If you have frames (those windows within your page), take them out. Either position what is inside into another element such as a table, or move it altogether into another page. If you use Flash, bad news. Flash at this time is not spider friendly. If you need to have a Flash page, make an alternative page in regular html format. Besides, not all users have the flash reader, which is another reason to offer an alternative page. For example, you could have the page index.html as a Flash one and have a link from such page to index2.html. The latter would be the home page made with regular text . This is where the SEO would be. Images, as we mentioned, are not read by SEs. You can create an alt tag to describe what the image is about. Alt tags are important for both spiders as well as people with poor eyesight who cannot see an image well. Also, in case an image does not load on a browser, the alt (alternative text) will be visible.

Other technologies such as Java are not read by search engines either. Having fancy Java applets on a page may be attractive but it will cause the robots to skip the code and go on. If you are using Frontpage to design web sites, be careful that the program does not include any proprietary tags. Finally, Frontpage uses server side extensions to execute certain functions. Whenever the functions are called, the part of a web page using them may not be indexed.

When designing a web site, consider using professional tools such as Dreamweaver. Employ CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to define styles on the page. This will keep clutter code to a minimum and make spidering easier. The cleaner the code, the easier it will be for a robot to go through the text and links.

Your web site will have links to navigate to other pages. A proper internal linking strategy will create a better value in your SEO efforts.

-Internal linking strategy

When you create links to navigate your company site, use complete URLs. Let me explain: instead of i.e. using seo_tutorial.php to link to this page from the AllPCOnline home page, we use the full URL, http://www.seotampa.com/seo_information/seo_tutorial.php. This creates a better relationship within the site. Also, create a site map. A site map is a page with all the links to the pages in the web site so that a spider has a better and easier way to navigate the domain. Same concept here, use full URLs.

Finally, thoroughly check the site for missing links. The dreaded 404 error, page not found, means that there are links that point to a page that does not exist. This is usually because of human mistakes in the design, such as mistyping a URL. 404s are not liked by search engines and users alike. Make sure there are none.

-Anchor text

Anchor text is the description of the URL you will be putting in on a page to link to another. If you wish to point to a page, it is useless for SEO purposes to say "visit http://www.xyz.com"; instead, use anchor text. In this case, if we want to optimize the page or site for "Ipod accessories", make the link read "Ipod accessories". The search engines will rank the link by looking at the key term in the anchor text. This strategy is extremely important for internal and external linking (The latter which will be discussed in the "Off Site SEO"section).

On Site SEO

The obvious step is to SEO a site for the key words you want your company to rank high for.

-The meta tags

Let's say we want to optimize the site for "SEO Tutorial for Beginners". Every page should contain meta tags. These are chunks of html code that contain descriptions of what the site is about:

The title tag. This is the most important tag. It is the one that shows in the top bar on the browser. This page says "SEO Tutorial for Beginners - Part 2". What we did is put our target key phrase in the title. A search engine will recognize this to be an important factor if a searcher looks for SEO Tutorial for Beginners. Titling the page "Advice for site owners to rank well in Google" will not help.

Description tag. The second most important tag. This is where you will see the description of a page when someone finds it in the search engine results. Please include your target words here as well. Make the description readable and non repetitive.

Keyword tag. This tag has become irrelevant. You can put your keywords in this tag if you wish. It will not do much as it has been abused and discounted by all the major SEs.

-Keyword density and distribution

Once you have written the copy, it is time to conduct SEO on it. Spread the keywords in a sensitive and user friendly manner through the page. Employ header tags (H1, H2 etc) to define subtitles and use the keywords in them. Good places to position keywords are at the beginning and then in order of importance at the bottom and middle. Density refers to the number of times a keyword should be present on a page. This varies from site to site. I would say no less than at least four times. Err on the side of caution. Some search engines can view high keyword frequency as spam.

-Copy/Content

Write as much content as you can, and keep the word count between 200 and 400 per page. Content should be written for users and optimized for search engines. Be informative and spread the keywords so they make sense. Keep adding content on a regular basis. It is very important to keep the site fresh. MSN is not secretive about this. It will factor content freshness as a major factor in rank changes (you can see this in their search builder options). 

Off page SEO is the effort to create popularity and trustworthiness towards the site in the World Wide Web.

Off Site SEO

-Linking

Now that the site has been optimized for all internal factors, it is time to make it known by the search engines. There is no need to submit your company site to the search engines. A linking strategy will allow the SEs to find and index it. Find sites related to yours and see if they would like to reciprocate links. You will need to create a page or more where you will list links to other sites. After doing so, contact the site webmasters and ask for an exchange. You will put a link to their site and they will return the favor. Ask for a link from them with anchor text that contains the keywords targeted. If you sell car insurance, link with other insurance sites, even if they do not provide car insurance services. Car club sites would be another option. Do not link with a shoe store. It is totally unrelated and will carry little or no weight.

-Submit to directories

Directories provide what is called a one-way link. You do not need to reciprocate. Most good directories charge a fee to have sites listed. The most notable exception is www.dmoz.org, which is a very important and free. With paid directories, it is a step worth the money, especially with a lot of competition for the targeted keywords. Also, other high value related sites may charge for this type of link. It may be useful taking a look at these options as well.

-Other ways to acquire one-way links

If you are an expert in the field, write articles and post them on the many article web sites. For example, an online aquarium fish store could post articles about how to start an easy saltwater aquarium. The article should include a link to the aquarium site with the usual anchor text option. Press releases are also very valuable. PRweb is a favorite. Given the example above, why not release a PR announcing a new aquarium system that makes maintenance easier, or announcing that tank raised fish is offered as an alternative to wild caught?

Creating informational sites or sections of a site devoted to information about products or services will drive many other sites to link to you. Offer the option of using your copy on other sites provided that a credit and link to you is offered. There are many creative ways to publicize your pages on the web.

-What not to do

There are techniques that may hurt your site. While it may be OK to pay for a link on a related and relevant web site, buying links just to increase numbers should be done with great caution. Let me explain: if you manufacture Ipod accessories and a site dedicated to informing readers of MP3 technologies and products has a featured paid link section for advertisers, it may be a good idea to pay. This is a relevant site, and if popular it will drive sales and possibly rankings.

On the other hand, there are text link brokers who will charge customers to put links on other sites, related and unrelated. Usually these "Links for sale" sites are already tagged by the search engines. This could damage ranks and even ban your site.

Obviously stay away from link farms. Link farms are built for the sole purpose to gather links, exchange with others to benefit third party sites. It is a sure way to get at least penalized.

Do not reciprocate with sites that have a PR0. PR stands for Pagerank, a Google feature that is part of how the search engine ranks sites. A PR0 is the lowest possible score. New sites have PR0, which is OK. Some sites have a 0 score because of penalties. The Google Toolbar, once installed, will read the PR of every site and page you visit. To be on the safe side, do not exchange with PR0.

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Reader's comments(1)
1: Thank you Sarvesh, it's great to hear PRWeb is a favorite!
Posted by:Frank Strong - 08 Jul, 2012