Our newly developed keywords will now become the primary ingredients
in our web pages that will help us position in the search
engines. We will be using them often in the various page elements
that we will be discussing next. Here are the critical page
elements that we will be honing and perfecting for our page
optimization:
Page title
This title is the title that appears at the very top of your
browser window and is implemented in the form of an html tag
(the title tag) that is nested in the head tag of your web
page. It is most often what is seen in the search engines
when your pages are shown in the index, and it is also the
first thing that the searcher sees when your site comes up
in their search results. This means that this is the phrase
that they will use in determining whether to visit your site
or not, so word it very carefully. My two biggest pieces of
advice for writing your title tag are:
1) Make your current keyword that
you are designing this particular page around the first word
in the title, and
2) do your best to incorporate your
USP in this title. I say do your best because often
you only get to make your pitch in 5 – 7 words, so do
it carefully.
Your page title could actually make or break your website’s
ability to attract visitors. You could have a #1 position
with a powerful keyword, but if your title is uninviting,
has no call to action, or doesn’t make powerfully clear
why someone should click your link instead of all of the others,
your #1 position will do you very little good. In the same
token, you could be number 5 on a page and get the click because
your title is so inviting! The Web Position Gold software
comes with some terrific information on how to create titles
that are impossible to resist!
Meta tags(meta keyword tag and meta description
tag)
Meta tags are one of the most talked about page elements by
so many when it comes to search engine optimization, but they
are often misunderstood and even more frequently over-emphasized.
While we have already discussed what meta tags are, where
they came from, and what they do, I think it would be a good
idea if I clarified one thing. Meta tags, while often over-emphasized
by so many web designers who don’t know any better,
they are not necessarily entirely worthless. I told you that
they do not hold the significance and importance that they
once did, they can still impact the position of your pages
to some degree with some engines. Some engines are still looking
at them somewhat. So while Meta tags are no longer the primary
variable for search engine positioning, they can play a small
role and I recommend that you use them. They can help.
There are two primary types of meta tags:
1) Meta Keyword tags (an itemized
keywords tag where each keyword or phrase is listed and separated
with commas) and
2) and Meta Description tags
(a brief description that picks up where the title tag leaves
off). Both will come in handy, and your Web
Position Gold software will give you guidance with these.
Heading
The heading of your page is another significant element considered
by search engines and impacting your page prominence. The
heading is given weight by the search engines because usually
the heading tells the reader what is coming in the page body
below. Keywords should be in the heading of course, and search
engines like a certain number of words in the heading as well.
It is different for each engine.
Page body
The page body is also important to consider when creating
pages to make the search engines happy. Search engines like
a page of content usually ranging from 200 – 500 words
(different for each engine and each keyphrase combination),
and they like keywords repeated toward the beginning of the
page, but not necessarily toward the end. They look for legitimate
content (cohesive sentences related to the keywords) as opposed
to just repeated keywords (considered a form of index spamming
called “spamdexing”).
URL text
The url is the actual address to the location in the file
seen in the location bar of your browser. This is where you
enter a domain name in your browser to go directly to a web
site. In your urls, it is a good idea to include your keywords
in your urls as you create your site. This can (and arguably
should) include your site’s domain name. This is simply
done by giving your pages names that are keywords. So, in
other words, if your domain name is made up of keywords and
your pages are named after keywords, then your urls will automatically
be made of key words. There you go!
Link Text
Link text is another variable in the page optimization equation.
This is arguably one of the bigger variables actually. You
see, the search engines see a link name as a big indicator
as to what the page the link leads to is about. For this reason
many believe that the words used in an actual link have tremendous
effect on the page prominence of the page it leads to.
One great example of the power of this variable exploited
is a tactic known as the “Google Bomb”. The “Google
Bomb” was made famous during the 2004 Presidential election
when democratic political web activists encouraged each other
to include a link that used the words George “miserable
failure” Bush on their web sites. When users entered
“miserable failure” in Google, President George
W. Bush’s biography came up number one on Google and
Yahoo. Soon thereafter online activists retaliated and President
Bush was replaced by such individuals as Michael Moore, Hillary
Clinton, John Kerry, and Jimmy Carter. Regardless of your
political persuasion, the point is that this “battle”
was all done using link text.
Alt tags
The original purpose of the ALT text was intended to be a
suitable textual alternative to the purpose of the image.
Sometimes it is used as a description of the image. Regardless,
this tag is yet another opportunity to reinforce keywords
and phrases since search engines do give at least some notice
to these little tags. It is worthwhile to take the time to
pay attention to them.
The variables within these elements that impact page optimization:
Word count
Word count is yet another key factor in page performance.
There is no simple answer on this one if you are looking for
a golden number that works every time on every page for every
keyword or phrase for every engine. It is different every
time. The good new however is that Web Position Gold can help
you with this by comparing your page to the page that currently
has the #1 spot for your keyword or phrase. As a general rule,
you should shoot for roughly 300 – 500 words per page
if you are not going to use Web Position Gold as a guide.
Keyword frequency and prominence
Keyword frequency and keyword prominence are often confused
with each other, but they are very different. While keyword
frequency refers to how many times your keyword appears in
an area, keyword prominence is based on the placement of your
keyword in a given area, more specifically, how close it is
to the top of the page.
Remember, frequency
= how often, and prominence = how
close to the top.
Here are some examples of keyword prominence that might help
you understand how prominence is calculated:
If a keyword appears at the beginning of an area, its prominence
will be 100%.
If a keyword appears in the middle of an area, its prominence
will be 50%.
If the keyword appears at the end of the area, prominence
would be 0%.
If the keyword appears at the beginning of the area, then
another repetition appears at the end of the area, it’s
frequency will be 2 , but it’s prominence will be 50%.
Other Impacting Factors:
Site Architecture, Depth and Link Structure
Site architecture, depth and link structure refer to how your
pages are organized, how many folders deep your site is and
how your links to each and every page on your site are set
up. Basically, no matter how you organize your pages or how
many folders deep your site goes, make sure you have links
from your home page or a high level site map page to ensure
that any and all of your site’s pages are indexed by
the search engines. If your only link to a page is three or
more pages deep into your site, then the engines may not ever
index that page. Search engines may only index pages one or
two levels deep into your site, so make sure you have links
to every page of your site on a secondary page at least if
not the homepage itself.
Link popularity
One of the latest buzzes in the world of search engine optimization
has become link popularity. Link popularity simply refers
to the number of links found on other sites pointing to your
site. If there are lots of links from other sites pointing
to yours, then you are considered “link popular”.
Exchanging links with legitimate sites related to your own
is a powerful tool. These link referrals are a big boost to
your site’s performance.
Take some advice from someone who has made a big mistake
in this area … don’t do something referred to
as link farming! Link farming is the practice of artificially
boosting your link popularity by partnering with a web site
that offers no real content besides links from other partners.
One of my sites was dropped from Google for a month because
I made the mistake of doing this before I understood that
it was wrong. It just seemed like a creative solution at the
time, but I soon found out that Google frowns upon link farming
severely. If someone inquires about exchanging links with
you, do yourself a favor and make sure that they are a legitimate
web site and not a link farmer.
Putting all the pieces to work!
I have just introduced you to the primary ingredients for
assembling solid pages that perform well on the search engines.
But now you are wondering how to put it all together to make
it work for your site? No problem. We’ll tackle that
next.
Let’s work with an analogy for a moment. Let’s
say that the sea of information we know as the internet is
a lake. Now, let’s say that people that are surfing
the net looking for products like ours are fish. And let’s
also say the web site we have created is our boat that gets
us to the fish, and the visitor purchasing our product is
the catch! And the bait… of course that is our USP.
Do you see what is missing from this equation? The fishing
pole! Without a good fishing pole, there is no way to reel
that fish in!
So what is our fishing pole going to be? Our fishing pole
is going to be a critical search engine optimization tool
called a Doorway Page. What the heck is a Doorway Page? Doorway
Pages are methodically designed (using all of the elements
we just went over) pages that make the search engines happy
with the intended result of being placed prominently on the
search engines. You see, most web designers design pages with
human eyes in mind. That is wonderful, but stopping there
is extremely short-sighted. We must keep in mind that human
eyes aren’t our only audience. The search engine spiders
and crawlers are a sort of audience as well. We have to make
quality content that pleases both the human and our crawler
audiences if we want our human audience to buy from us and
our crawler audience to list us prominently on their indexes.
These doorway pages are designed specifically to position
well on the search engines and then direct you visitors directly
to your homepage! |
