How to Optimize for Google
Part 1 of 3
By Scott Van Achte
In today's online world, search engine rankings can make your business succeed and while rankings in Yahoo! and MSN are very valuable their combined market value is still less than that of Google. This makes achieving top rankings in Google that much more important. The focus of this video will be with on-page website optimization.
The Right Keywords
If you select the wrong keywords, it can make your entire optimization experience essentially a waste. Choose keywords that are attainable but yet still offer a reasonable search frequency for your industry. Your phrase selection should also be targeted to bring qualified traffic to your site. Using the hotel industry as an example, targeting the word Hotel would make very little sense, but by narrowing it down to Victoria BC Hotel, you now have less competition, and a more qualified audience.
Keep your targets in perspective and go after the obtainable rankings.
Website Optimization
There are many onsite factors that play a role in your search engine rankings. Here are a number of those factors and what you can do to increase your chances of success.
The Title Tag
The Title Tag plays one of the most important roles in search results at Google, and is almost always the heading Google chooses for each of its listings. Placements of your target phrase is best used near the start of the tag and repeated again in the middle or near the end.
Three uses of your target phrase maybe helpful in some instances as long as it is not too overwhelming. For best results, each page on your site should have a totally unique Title Tag. If you do only one thing to your website, make sure that all of your title tags are relevant, unique, and contain your target phrases for each page.
Meta Description Tag
The Meta Description Tag is still occasionally used by Google as the description which appears in the search results themselves. While there's used to be a more common practice, Google tends to use it most often on sites with very limited content or those which are Flash-based. The Meta Description tag still has an impact on search rankings. Your best bet, when using this tag is to keep it short and sweet with your target phrase close to the start and never repeat it more than three times. Like the Title Tag, each page on your site should have its own unique Description Tag.
Meta Keyword Tag
When it comes to Google, this tag is useless, and won't influence your rankings at all. There is some speculation as to whether a spammy keyword tag can have a negative effect on your Google rankings. As a result, if you do utilize a Keyword Meta tag for the smaller engines it is best to keep it clean and play it safe.
Density
Today the ideal density varies from industry-to-industry and phrase-to-phrase. To find out what density you should aim for, take the top 10 or 20 search results and see what percentage those sites are using. In most cases, you will find that the majority of these sites have a very similar density to one another, and this average density is a good estimation of what you should aim for.
Body Text and Keyword Placement
The location of relevant text on your site will help establish the overall importance of your target phrase. While you do not want to overwhelm the engines and site visitors with a bombardment of target phrases at the top of the page, try to sprinkle in some instances as close to the top of the page as possible.
Synonyms
Make sure you include various synonyms for your target phrases within the body text on your site. Google will use these synonyms to tie in the overall relevance of the page for your main target phrases which in turn can improve your odds.
Keywords in Domain
If you are studying often the online world and are contemplating which domain to go for, consider one that uses your target phrase assuming that it is both relevant to your business name and uses no more than a single hyphen. While multiple hyphens in a domain can be successful, they are very common with highly spammy websites. So it is best not to take that rout if possible.
Keywords in Page Specific URLs
Using keywords for specific URLs can also help add a little bit of value to your site providing you use them responsibly. Consider using a keyword as a directory name and as part of a file name where it naturally makes sense to do so. If you have a website that focuses on tourism and includes local hotel listings, you may want to consider the following structure for your page on the Hilton.
Heading Tags
Placement of target phrases within Heading Tags help to establish the importance of those given phrases. That said, do not over do it or abuse it. Only place target phrases within a Heading Tag if it makes sense to do so, and don't flood a page with numerous tags. Heading tags are not as critical as they once were, but still a good contribution to a well-optimized page.
Link Anchor Text
This is the actual text you click on as part of a link. When full or partial target phrases are used within your text Links, they help pass on some value to the linked pages for those phrases. This is also true when considering surrounding text. When the content around the link is also relevant, the link holds slightly more value.
Image Alt Text
While Image Alt Text still plays a minor role, it's biggest part is within the use of image-based navigation. If you have an image linked to another page, the Alt Text will be attributed much the same way as standard Link Anchor Text is.
Image Alt Text should always be short, and to the point, and should accurately describe either the image itself or the page the image is linking to. Do not use Alt Text as a place to stop keywords.
Inline Links
These are links that are found mid-sentence or mid-paragraph as opposed to a simple listing of links as found in a menu or possibly on a sitemap. Links found mid-paragraph tend to pass on a little more value from the surrounding text and can offer more relevance to the linked page.
Site Navigation
It is absolutely imperative that your website be fully-spiderable by the search engines. This may seem obvious but often webmasters overlook Google's ability to crawl a website.
Google has become very advanced in what links it can follow and how it can spider a website. But there are still a few things that can cause significant roadblocks like Flash and JavaScript and DHTML.
URL Structure
Avoid long elaborate URLs with extraneous characters. While Google has reached the point where they can index massive URL strings, it is best to avoid them if at all possible. For dynamic sites consider utilizing Mod Rewrites to significantly clean up the URL to not only make it more search engine friendly but make it more user-friendly as well.
Basic Website Optimization is a critical component for successful placement in Google, but it is only part of the overall picture.
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