Keyword Optimization - How to Optimize for Google Search Results

Keyword Optimization...Overlooked Keyword Research and Processes!

Keyword optimization, better known as Keyword Research, is the researching, the analyzing, then the choosing of the most suitable keyword phrases for your content. Keyword research and optimization done right will create a funnel of qualified and targeted traffic back to your site from the search engine results pages (SERP's).

Proper keyword optimization is the finding of those targeted and profitable keywords and keyword phrases that your potential visitors will enter into the search engine's Search box, which will bring up the most relevant sites to a particular subject.

This process will play a large role in determining where you will land in the Search Engine Results Pages... it could mean the difference between not being found anywhere on the Web, or being the first site that users click on when performing a search.

This keyword optimization procedure is NOT a onetime thing... this is something that needs to be done each and every time you decide you want to bless the World with your brilliance of the written word.

Choosing the proper keywords for your site is absolutely critical for SEO... finding yourself within the search engine results pages (SERP's) for keyword phrases that you are targeting isn't too shabby either. However, proper keyword research and optimization is probably one of the most common areas overlooked by online marketers.

Overlooked Keyword Optimization & Research that Search Engines Use!

The whole purpose of the list below is to familiarize yourself with crucial optimization elements that are often overlooked by the average blogging professional, yet the search engines look for while crawling your site.

Best SEO Keyword Research Practices!
Let's Start with the Long Tailed Keyword Phrase: Long tail keywords are a way of expanding on a core, generic word to be made into a more specific targeted keyword term. Example: A Generic Broad Keyword - "Knives"; a more targeted, Long Tail Keywords Phrase - "Handmade Damascus Knives." What you have done here is narrowed down the visitors search by giving the specific information that you are offering for "Knives."

Since the Google Panda Update was developed "to give people the most relevant answers to their queries," it might be in your best interest to target keywords that are related specifically to your content. You might consider this your best method to find your main targeted keyword phrase suitable to your article topic.

You can use the Free Online SEO tools like the Google External Keyword Research tool to find the keywords that potential visitors will associate with the information you are offering.

Keyword Variations: This is just another way of saying that not each Internet searcher uses the same words to find information... you need to think like your visitors and create some different variations of your targeted keyword phrase adding words at the beginning, the end, the middle, etc. 

Example of keyword variants from the above long tailed keyword phrase: "Custom Damascus Knives," "Damascus Hunting Knives." These types of keyword phrases you can put within your written content where it sounds right and makes sense.

Keyword Synonyms: Fairly self-explanatory... these are words that have similar meanings and the search engines are looking for word association within your content.

Keyword Stemming: This is the growth of one keyword phrase that is related to your website article by using suffixes, prefixes, or adding pluralization. This is another way of making one keyword phrase into many additional new keywords that you can use in your article.

Example: blog, blogs, blogger, blogger's, blogging, weblog, weblogs... you get the idea!

Semantically Related or Relevant Keyword Phrases: The use of these relevant keyword phrases in your content will allow the search engines to determine relevancy by the subject matter, rather than keyword density. In the world of organic or the natural search, semantically related content refers to words that are connected thematically to a specific search query.

For example: Canon Cameras, Nikon Lenses, SLR, Zoom Lenses, Tripods, etc., can all be synonymous with the word Camera. Creating sentences and paragraphs using semantic keyword variations in your article can improve its relevancy score in the search engines' ranking algorithms.

Best SEO On-Page Keyword Optimization Practices!

Let's Start with the URL Structure: URL, which stands for Uniform Resource Locator, essentially is an address which is used to find your website pages. Without them there would be no means of navigating from one page to another.

Making your URL file names relevant to the content contained within the page is not only an important organization factor, but both search engines and your visitors associate the name of the page with the content that it contains. Just as it makes sense to have relevant keywords within your web page for the topic you are writing about, you should name the file URL after your main keyword phrase.

Your URL file name needs to contain only the keyword phrase that you are targeting. It does not need to be the full sentence of the main article headline... the shorter, the better!

Main Article Headline: Capture the visitors attention with a compelling and relevant headline in regards to their search, or lose them. You have less than 10 seconds to grab their attention before they move on. And, of course, you will want to place a keyword phrase describing your content within the article headline.

Keep in mind that your Article Headline is a brief summary of the content contained, it does not need to be more than 5 to 7 words long.

Say No To Illegal SEO Techniques

Search engine optimization spamming, substantially increases the possibilities that a website or page will appear at the top of results on search engines for a certain keyword.

Businesses that use illegal SEO techniques to control, raise and improve their search engine positions, are denying or removing the rights of ethical websites to be heard and seen.  Regrettably, there are still many individuals who believe that “illegal SEO techniques” do no harm.

It is unethical and illegal for “spamming sites” to control search engines in order to gain high rankings in search engines at your website’s expense. You acquire your search engine position fairly so you deserve to be safeguarded from deceitful individuals who steal your visitors, publicity and income.

Remember that any effort so as to deceive search engines to achieve higher rankings is regarded as “SEO spam”; under no circumstances should you implement such methods in your marketing campaigns.

Never sacrifice your principles just so to reach your goals. There will be a great risk involved, such as your website can be penalized or worst, banned from top search engines and can stay banned for a long time.

Unethical and illegal SEO techniques:

1.  “Keyword stuffing”.  This means employing the use of the same or exact “keywords” in your “META tags” or anywhere in your content repeatedly. 

2.  Hidden links and text.  Search engines work by scanning pages for certain keywords which are submitted into a search request and display results where the exact keyword appears typically, on a “page”.

Webmasters then insert some links or texts that are only readable by search engines but can not be seen by the human eye.  You can, for instance put a white link or text with the appropriate keywords unto a certain web page with also a white background.  Individuals can not detect it and will not even notice the difference; however “spiders” can read it and rank that site higher.

3.  “Mirror websites” or “Sybil attack”.  These are several sites having identical contents but different “URL”, all linking to one another, constructed for a very cruel objective.

4.  “Doorway pages”.  Normally, these are pages of poor quality constructed to rank highly particularly for one or even more selected keywords.  These do not affect your website visitors and only constructed for search engines.
These pages can contain the exact content of other sites but generally exhibits only a link going to the main page with no “navigation menu”.  They can at times dwell on the very same, however typically on other business’ server.

5.  Cloaking.  Delivers many different web pages for search engines and visitors. Webmasters construct their servers so that it can identify “IP addresses” of spiders then provide them with content rich and optimized pages, at the same time displaying different web pages for individuals.

Cloaking can likewise redirect a web visitor to their home page.

6.  “Link farms”.  Purposely to acquire link popularity, link farms are typically one page consisting of fifty up to one hundred or even more links to certain websites having no similarities with your website’s content.

Search engine “spammers” are aware of the fact that their pages’ content are of poor quality and are useless to individuals that visit their site. 

The unethical and illegal websites prompted Google (Google page rank) as well as other top search engines in improving search technology that now has faster, better and advanced spam filters that can detect illegal techniques then ban such websites from search engines forever.

Risks and dangers of Unethical and illegal SEO Techniques

SEO spamming can, in reality bring about high rankings.  Do keep in mind however, that the effect is only temporary. Webmasters using illegal SEO techniques can benefit from their high search engine position for days, weeks, even months however once search engines discover webmasters using these illegal techniques, then they will be banned from search engine index for possibly a lifetime.

Even if one is not banned for a lifetime, it is difficult to be “re-indexed”.  One may need to start over and purchase a new “domain name”.  So then before using any illegal SEO techniques, think wisely and weigh if you are prepared to put your entire internet business in jeopardy just for months of obtaining a high rank in search engines.

Off-Page Factors On Doing SEO

SEO, or “Search engine optimization” is a method used by experts to improve a website’s search engine ranking, with the objective of having it in the search results’ “top 10” or at the very least, having it in the first three pages of “search results”.

Off-page SEO pertains to all the influencing factors that determine your website traffic levels and ranking which are not inside the website; they are principally links that comes in your website from other websites referred to as “link popularity”

Link popularity is a key factor utilized by the famous search engines in ranking websites.
In order for SEO, to be useful, it needs to provide valuable, authentic and educational website content as well as information at the same time maximizing “Off-Page” factors in securing good ranking in search engine positions.

Almost all search engines put a great deal of significance in a website's “link popularity”. They utilize the amount of incoming and outgoing links to websites to establish the relevance of a website for specific keywords or key phrases. Take note that incoming links prove to be more significant compared to outgoing links.

Google, one of the top search engines, makes use of its “Pager Rank” or “PR” as their means in measuring the “link popularly” of a certain website. When you installed the “Google toolbar”, you easily can view a web’s PR.  A PR of a website is read from 0 to ten, ten being the highest. When you see a grey “PR” bar, it signifies that, that particular website have either not yet been indexed or was dropped or have been banned.

Acquiring quality links coming from good or reputable websites can be a difficult task. A reputable website only will agree to link to your website when you can offer them certain benefits.

Reciprocal Linking and how to go about it:

Reciprocal linking in simple terms means exchanging links so to enhance link popularity. This often entails sending e-mail letters to certain webmasters of your choice that you find has complementary and relevant content.
Write a polite, personalized and good e-mail letter to the “webmaster” that you want to “exchange links” with. Here are some guidelines:

1.  Download the Alexa (http://www.alexa.comand) and Google tool bars. Google “tool bar” will permit you to view the “PR” of other websites, so that you are aware which sites have great traffic and link with them. The Alexa “tool bar” supplies you with estimates of the website's traffic as well as the sites that are being linked to it.

2. Visit particular websites that you want to “exchange links” with in order that you will know what that particular website is all about.

3. Send email letters to websites which you want to be linked with.  In your letter, mention important things regarding your website and explain the benefits of having a “link exchange” for both your sites as well as both your visitors.
Place a “link” to the website and inform the webmaster as to where he can find the link. Likewise, furnish the key phrase or keywords that you need to be “linked”.

4. Broadcast your willingness to “exchange links” in your website. You may use a "reciprocal linking" link or "link to us" as well as a “web-form” for possible “link partners” to enter their details.

Incoming “one way linking” and how to go about it:

Incoming “one way links” are considered by webmasters to be the best kind of links that one can for one’s website, but also one that is hard to acquire. They can increase link popularity and website PR. They point out to all “search engines” that your website is an expert on key phases or keyword employed to “link” to you.

Here are some guidelines:

1. Construct an informative, good quality and educational website or unique, educational and authentic web page content. Great content is what webmaster look for so to refer you to their visitors by way of links going to your website.

2. Offer free tools and helpful service in your website.

3. Give something away for free at your website, such as quality e-books, downloadable trial software, gift or a useful program in exchange for “links”.

4. Arrange an award for winners to link to your website before they can claim their prizes. Make certain that your policy is clear to everyone.

5. Allot a budget so you can pay for niche directory listing. Present excellent and relevant articles with links directing to your web home page and give your consent to webmasters to display your articles in their sites.
Link popularity will not grow overnight

Allocate a time each week just for working on building links, so that it becomes a regular habit.  Select one day each week as well as schedule the time.  You need to oblige yourself on a regular basis and make your priority, or else you can not accomplish it.

Note that “link building” is gradual and accumulating process. Over time all the links will start to add up until such time that there will be hundreds and even thousands linking to you.

Spamming is Not a Good SEO Technique

Perhaps very few things can illustrate competition as vividly as the Web. After all, how can one website compete with thousands of other websites just like it?

If the attention span of an average Internet user is as expansive as a search engine’s listing, then there’s nothing to worry about. Unfortunately, though, that is not the case. Very likely, a person conducting a search on the Internet will probably just browse through the top 3 to 5 SERPs (search engine results pages) and stop there. Website that get buried in the 10th page and onwards will probably not get too much attention if certain measures are not undertaken.

Those measures are what are called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Experts in this field perform certain procedures which may be seen a “website boot camp” to get your website into fighting form that will compete in the top rankings of a search engine.

However, as it is with almost everything else, some shortcuts exist that are able to “cheat” search engines into placing a particular website at a high ranking, despite the fact that it offers no real information. These sets of shortcuts are called “spamming”.

SEO spam (or spamdexing) is a set of techniques that manipulate a website for the purpose of creating an unrealistic boost in its rankings on SERPs. Here are just some examples of some SEO spam:

1. Cloaking
When a website presents a set of information to a search engine different from a set the user is seeing, then cloaking has been done. What usually happens is that the web page’s code is relevant to the user’s search keywords, but when the user visits that particular web page, he user sees a document that has little or nothing to do with his search.

2. Artificially networked sites
There is really nothing wrong with creating links between one site to another so long as the links are relevant and serve to connect useful information.

However, spammers who perform this technique set up several web sites and link them together even the sites contain no real and useful information. The purpose for doing so is simply to create the illusion of a highly referenced site because of its density of links. If this is the case, then it can be considered spamming.

3. Blog and Forum Spam
Online blogs and fora are a great source of information since it these formats are built to be updated within short intervals. This, in itself, what makes it a good reference for information, which is why search engines like to visit these sites and rank it well for the quality of information it holds.

However, spammers have taken advantage of this by flooding blogs and fora with irrelevant links to the websites they want to generate artificial ranking for. Not only are they cheating the search engine company by misleading a user to irrelevant information, they also interrupt the bloggers and the forum participants, which is downright rude.

4. Hidden text.
Similar to cloaking, hidden texts are meant to make search engines think that a page is about one thing, while it is actually about another. But it fools the search engine this way: the text that the search engine is able to reads is camouflaged by making the text font color the same as the background. What happens is that the user is unable to read what the search engine saw, and therefore may be looking at a document that is not related to the user’s search.

Other techniques are to create small, imperceptible links that a user can accidentally click on, thus generating more hits for a website even if the user had no intentions of visiting that site at all.

By this time, you probably already know why spamming is done. It is a shortcut used by some unscrupulous website owners to make their website rank high on SERPs. Folks who pose as SEO experts use these spamming techniques to get money for doing little to no work.

Now that you know who they are, and how they do it, here’s why you should have nothing to do with spamming and the people who condone them.

The whole point of the Internet was to create a wealth of information that everyone can access and add to. The whole idea was to be able to create a place where information can be created and shared with others so that it can foster understanding despite physical borders.

Other results of this information have led to the development e-commerce and online businesses, which in itself is not necessarily a bad thing. It still contributes to a community of information and sharing.

However, spamming is fundamentally profiting at someone else’s expense. A spammer profits by using other people to make his website rank higher than others without taking the necessary time and effort to make his website useful and relevant as what others have done.

It speaks poorly of website owners who see nothing but their own bottom lines in using the Internet. It is basically exploiting the trust and the willingness to share, which made the Internet such a promising venue for everyone.

Finally, it demeans honest SEO experts who take the time and effort to produce quality website and make it a point to follow the rules. Search Engine Marketing is helping to level the playing field so it can allow businesses of any to advertise right along side each other. And that is a commendable thing, which everyone should gladly support.

Search engines, on their part, are developing smarter technologies to detect spamming techniques in order to give users the best list of information from the Internet. Eventually, the spam methods mentioned above may be eliminated. But it is very likely other more sophisticated ones will come up. On your part, you can report spammers to these search engines when you encounter them. The more people like you who do this, the easier it will be to apprehend these cheaters and make it more difficult for spammers to do their thing.

How to SEO your Web Page

For a commercial web-page to prosper in a search engine string search and come out on top, the page has to essentially be “prepared” to be detected and well-received by the search engine algorithm.

Because of the high amount of browsers visiting search engines such as Google and Yahoo, a new form of process was developed to make full use of the pros and avoid the cons of the algorithms used by the search engine companies. This process of preparation is called Search engine optimization (SEO).

As the amount of information grows exponentially, search engines will play a more vital role in keeping order in the World Wide Web. This has encouraged increasing numbers of people with something to look for to rely on search engines more. It simply is now a fact that you can find information faster if you use a search engine.

Because of this companies looking to attract more traffic to their sites would pay for valuable ad space within search results sent by the search engines to browsers. Because browsers are more often than not set on getting information about something, placing an ad that totally dovetails with what they’re looking for makes it easy for the advertiser to make a sale.

What search engine optimizers do then, is to make every effort to make the site considered highly relevant and show up in the top ten listing of their respective search strings. The usual method of SEO is to improve content, and dynamically expand the site with even more relevant data.

Unfortunately, unscrupulous SEO’s have also devised ways to cheat the algorithms of search engine to keep themselves on top with low quality or even misleading content. Google, Yahoo and other search engines have fought back by using even more complex algorithms to filter the junk and garbage out of their engines.

To properly optimize a web page, please follow the following steps:

1. Optimization should be part of the design. To properly optimize a web page, it should be considered as part of the design process. It should not be treated as an afterthought after the fact. This will lead to shoddy worksmanship and create unnecessary strain in the browser looking for relevant data.
2. Each web page must be optimized. That is to say, each web page must be unique, with their own content, titles and tags.
3. It’s not just the search engines. Don’t create a site specifically for search engines alone. Most people who start out this way create a site that is unwieldy and has bad grammar. Most browsers pass over unprofessional sites with poor copy.
4. Keywords. Make sure you have a list of terms you want placed in the page. Also consider that the keywords relevant to page 1 stays in page 1 while page 2 keywords stay in page 2. This is to make sure each page is unique in its offering, avoiding redundancy. In terms to competitiveness, a linking campaign will probably create more traffic and better results than concentrating on keywords.

Place your keywords strategically in the following areas: Page title, Meta tags, Body, Headings, Images, Bullets, Links.

High quality website typically rank well in the search engines partly because more and more people recommend it to others via word of mouth, email, instant messenger, or even better, take the link and place it in their own website link sections.

Google considers pages with inbound links as a vote to the quality and relevance of that site, increasing its rank in the search engine hierarchy.

In addition to inbound links, search engines also send out spiders to assess the site for relevance against an algorithm. The spider basically goes to the site and analyzes all the text in the page, including markup items, the meta tags and the title.

Spiders can read the following items on a web page, thus making the item highly relevant to search engines: text, page titles, meta tags, meta descriptions, code, tables. Depending on further technological considerations, search engines may consider other languages like Javascript and such. Currently, the spiders will just consider them clutter.

Web page optimization values content more than graphical artistic impact. One must keep in mind when the end result needed is to increase presence in the advertiser’s chosen search engine string.

On-Page Optimization Tips

Some of the key elements in their website can be found and accessed. "On-page optimization" Some areas of interest in web sites are:

• Title of the page

• URL

• Meta Description 

• Alt image attributes

• Content

Before you do anything with on-page optimization (SEO or any other event), you must first select the right keywords for your page.

Page Title
The titles are very important for the optimization of the pages. The title appears in the top of the browser and search engines are often, as the title used in the search engines. The title is a good place for keywords. Creating direct ownership to the point and make sure all pages have unique titles. For example, a page on the PVC pipe plumbing in a site, the title "PVC pipe plumbing flights | Plumbing Supplies Joes" have (I had to use Joe the Plumber as an example, I could not help). Note that a keyword in the long run, many contain specific words. Be used with this search engine keyword phrase for that page, when people are looking for PVC pipes, cheap PVC pipe, plumbing, cheap, cheap, good plumbing, plumbing supply, etc.

URL
Often, when the sides with a view Content Management System (CMS), the URLs of pages just spilled a cup of soup of letters are laid out on the desk. Sometimes these URLs are dynamic and changing so every time you visit the page, so it's a big problem for the bots to index the pages properly. Unfortunately, the URL has nothing to do with targeted keywords, unless you want to apply po = J0ro57v. Many changes CMS can be added to the search engine URL. For example: www.joesplumbingsupplies.com / products / pvc_pipes is a URL, the search engine, because it is short, descriptive, and include relevant keywords.

Meta-Description
The meta-description appears in the page code. Make sure each page of your site has its own unique description tag of the target. The meta description is often used to describe the page with the search results after listing the title of the page. With a description of the target, the chances increase that people click on your ad. Can also be used to provide a telephone number or other call to action included.

Code structure
By structuring the body of the page, use the H1 and H2 tags. Search engines a high priority in the words on the labels H1 and H2. Get first place in Google is worth little if the content of your site is relevant or the content is confusing. Programmers sometimes forget that people read this and not just some random bot from Google. Where the design and programming of websites, still give priority to people entering the area by the robots of search engines. Be careful what content in flash down. Although Google can now see the text in your Flash files on the best keywords in the HTML code to get into the flash. Some sites use JavaScript extensively for the site structure and navigation. Since the robot always avoided by reading Java Script, confused with this form. Many coding geeks have debated whether the label bold or strong day for better SEO. According to Matt Cutts of Google rather than the same weight on both labels

Alt attributes
Many times when people optimize the placement of the website does not make use of the ALT attribute for images. To adequately describe the images on a Web site to search engines will see that even the images relevant to the keywords. They are also more likely to be displayed in the results when people search for images.

Content
The last point is one of the most important. You have content to sell their products or their product is the content that is important enough to have relevant content to each page. Make sure each page reads well and is understandable, because people do not buy the products of the search engine robots. It is good to other sites, provided they are relevant to link. Make sure, too many outbound links on each page of a site. Many people have the misconception that roll in building a website and then relax and the money!

Building a website is a task that never really worked. They should always be updated and changing information on their websites. If you want to return people to your site, you need to do something. By adding new content to a website, which also improve your chances of ranking well in Google. Regular updates allow your site indexed faster. Search engines see pages updated regularly updated, accurate and relevant.

On-site optimization, you should do first when determining your keywords. If you follow these simple instructions, you will find that you are much better ranking in search engines.

A Brief History of Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is the art and science of making web pages attractive to internet search engines. Some internet businesses consider search engine optimization to be the subset of Search Engine Marketing.

In the middle of the 1990s webmasters and search engine content providers started optimizing websites. At the time all the webmasters had to do was provide a URL to a search engine and a web crawler would be sent from the search engine. The web crawler would extract link from the web-page and use the information to index the page by down loading the page and then storing it on the search engines server. Once the page was stored on the search engines server a second program, called an indexer, extracted additional information from the web-page, and determines the weight of specific words. When this was complete the page was ranked.

It didn't take very long for people to understand the importance of being highly ranked.

In the beginning search engines used search algorithms that webmasters provided about the web pages. It didn't take webmasters very long to start abusing the system requiring search engines to develop a more sophisticated form of Search Engine Optimization. The search engines developed a system that considered several factors; domain name, text within the title, URL directories, term frequency, HTML tags, on page key word proximity, Alt attributes for images, on page keyword adjacency, text within NO-FRAMES tags, web content development, site-maps, and on page keyword sequence.

Google developed a new concept of evaluating internet web pages called Page Rank. Page Rank weighs a web page's quantity and quality based on the pages incoming links. This method of search engine optimization was so successful that Google quickly began to enjoy successful word of mouth and consistent praise.

To help discourage abuse by webmasters, several internet search engines, such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Ask.com, will not disclose the algorithms they use when ranking web pages.The signals used today in search engine optimization typically are; keywords in the title, link popularity, keywords in links pointing to the page, Page-rank (Google), Keywords that appear in the visible text, links from on page to the inner pages, and placing punch line at the top of the page.

For the most part registering a web-page/website on a search engine is a simple task. All Google requires is a link from a site already indexed and the web crawlers will visit the site and begin to spider its contents. Normally a few days after registering on the search engine the main search engine spiders will begin to index the website.

Some search engines will guarantee spidering and indexing for a small fee. These search engines do not guarantee specific ranking. Webmaster's who don't want web crawlers to index certain files and directories use a standard robots.txt file. This file is located in the root directory. Occasionally a web crawler will still crawl a page even if the webmaster has indicated he does not wish the page indexed.