Search Engine Optimization is THE key factor when it comes to promoting your website. In order for regular internet users to find your site, you need to have it listed within the major search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo.
A quote taken from John Krycek: Forget any advertisement you see for instant number one search results or automated this or that. Most are scams, and the ones that aren't might get you positioned, but it will be very short lived. Search engine optimization is an ongoing process. Achieving and maintaining a high rank, especially on highly competitive keywords, requires constant maintenance".
Anyone who who understands SEO and builds websites will tell you that if your site is not built around sound SEO techniques it can have adverse effects on your ranking and also the amount of customers who are drawn to your site. You'll also hear people to tell you in order for this to be done properly you need to pay for software or better still, pay someone large amounts of money to do this for you. To a certain extent this is true. It's true in the sense that you can purchase software or pay someone to build your site so it's SEO friendly to the major search engines. It saves you time and you wouldn't need to worry about it yourself, but it can cost a lot of money. But let me ask you this question. What happens if the software you're using stops working? Or better still, are you really willing to pay someone large amounts of money every time you build a new website in order to ensure its SEO friendly? If you answered yes to both questions, why are you still here? If your a little unsure because the concept of Search Engine Optimization" and it seems a little scary then let me put your mind at ease. To make your site SEO friendly is not hard to do. In fact you'll be amazed at how simple it can be.
As this section is going to be quite in depth and long I've broken it down into parts:
METATags
Title
Content
Anchor Links and internal and external links
Site Map
Meta Tags: One of the most important aspects of building your website is META Tags. META Tags are an essential tool for any Website developer. They can identify the creator of the page, what HTML specifications the webpage follows, the keywords and phrase (description) of the page. In fact META Tags can be used for a variety of different functions within a website. The two aspects we're going to be concentrating on are keywords and description and how we can use these in our title, content and links both external and internal. Keyword and Description attributes are embedded between the <head></head> tags of your website and search engines use these tags to index your website. It's also how people who search for a particular word or phrase are directed to the appropriate website. Without properly optimizing your website with the best keywords or phrases it can lead to jeopardising how well your website will rank.
Lets have a look at two examples:
Lets say you were to build a website about vintage, classic and muscle cars. You could write your tags similar to the following:
<METANAME="keywords" CONTENT="vintage, hotrods, cars, classic, automobiles">
then your would add the description of your website.
<METANAME="description" CONTENT="Website for enthusiasts of restored cars">
Can you see anything wrong with the above METATags? If you were to Google anyone of those Keywords you would get hundreds of thousands if not millions of return results. What you want to do is optimize your site in order to get a target audience to your site. So not only have we NOT optimized our keywords, we've also written a description about our site which reflects none of our keywords. The best way to do this is to create a niche market for your website. Instead of just building your entire website around lots of different cars, try building it particularly around one model, make, manufacturer or even era of car. This then raises the question of how we go about doing this. Thankfully the internet is full of keyword analysis tools. One tool I swear by is the Google Adwords Tool. Lets say for argument sakes, after researching different topics on vintage, classic and hotrod cars I found that there was a niche market in people looking for information on Chevrolet Cameros. I would take keywords and phrases I've found with the Google Adsense Tool (Read the tutorial I've written which shows how to use this tool to great effect for this) and build my keywords and descriptions tags around and ultimately my site.
My Keywords would be:
<METANAME="keywords" CONTENT="1967 camero, 1967 chevrolet camero, general motors chevy camero, American muscle cars GM, muscle cars">
Then write my description along the lines of
<METANAME="description" CONTENT="Detailed history of General Motors 1967 Chevrolet Camero - Muscle Car Chevy Camero"
Notice how we've used our keywords within the description of our site as well. The Description METAtag content is used by some, but not all search engines to describe the contents of your webpage. If the search engine a visitor has used to query a search displays the content of a description tag, then you want to ensure your webpage catchers the eye of the visitor and compel them to click on your site. Being ranked at the top of the first page doesn't mean a site will be clicked first.
I know it may seem a little odd to target people who only want information on Chevy Cameros when you're trying to build a website which covers a large range of vintage, classic and muscles cars. But chances are these people are car enthusiast and may belong to a club and know other people who have similar interests in other classic model cars. Once your target visitor is on your site then you have the ability to not only deliver the information they need but also to let them know that you have information on a broader rage of vintage, classic and muscle cars. Even though the internet is the largest from of advertising today, it will never compare to the humble advertising tool, "word of mouth", which has been around since the dawn of man.
You also want to make sure you don't use keywords which are not relevant to your site. If you're building a website on cars then don't use terms which have nothing to do with the content. A good example would be to try and get motorcycle enthusiasts to your site by adding a couple of motorcycle keywords, If your site has nothing to do with motorcycles then don't use keywords to the contrary. Search engines have gotten wise to this little "blackhat" technique and will penalize you for it.
Title: Make sure to use keywords in your main page title including internal pages you link to - Placing keywords between <title></title> in the HTML code of your web page can have an impact with your click through rate. Where possible avoid prepositions and conjunctions, example: the, and, for, with, etc. Unlike keywords METATags, it's recommended to use a dash instead of comma between keywords in your title. Select one or two targeted keywords for each page of your website and put these keywords in the page title. If we go back to our example of vintage, classic and muscle cars and the METATags used, we could very easily use our description as the title as well.
<title>History of General Motors 1967 Chevrolet Camero - Chevy Camero</title>
Did you notice how I shortened the description and also used a dash between keywords? Using your keywords within in the Title is a good SEO technique. There is some debate over whether it improves your ranking. I believe it does have an adverse effect on improving your ranking and if it doesn't, then it doesn't hurt as it provides an overview of the content on your site. As stated before, just because a website is #1 on a search engines first page, doesn't mean its gong to be clicked first. But be warned, just like keywords and descriptions METATags, don't over do it as you may be penalized and loose valuable rankings on search engines.
Content: Before I get into this section I feel it's important for people who are building their first website to have a basic understanding on how search engines index their pages. Search engines use automated software which crawls over the internet to provide information on webpage's to build their databases. When you search for a particular subject the keywords or phrases are checked against the database of webpage's the spiders have retrieved and analyzed and the search engines have indexed. The URL's which have the most relevant information based on your query are then returned in order with the top results being listed on the first page top to bottom. This is why your METATag keywords and descriptions are so very important. I've used the example of Chevy Cameros on this page quite a bit but it doesn't mean I will rank well within the search engines for people looking for information on Chevy Cameros as my keywords and description show that Chevy Cameros have no relevance to this page. That's a very basic explanation on how spiders and bots work for search engines, a more technical explanation can be found on various websites.
Ok back to the topic at hand: No doubt by this stage you may have heard of the phrase "content is king". I can't stress the importance of this phrase enough. The content of your website has a huge impact on your rankings. Whenever possible you should use your keywords within the content of your webpage. Repeat your keywords often within the content of your webpage but don't over do it. The last thing you want to happen is for your new website to be considered spam, is grammatically incorrect and or has no relevance. The more time you spend updating your content the more search engines will crawl your website to see what it contains. This also provides an opportunity to get cross linked to other content relevant websites which can also improve your rankings. A good habit to get into is to write articles or blogs for your site with the option for people to comment on. this way your site is always having content added to it whether directly or indirectly through comments. This also rings true with forums.
Anchor Links and internal and external links: This is a very easy use of keywords on your website but so many people don't use it. Sometimes we find it hard to use a particular keyword on our new website we're creating and wish we could use it more often. This is where links can play an important part. No doubt when you build your first website you're also going to be building internal pages with links from your index (home) page for people to navigate to. Another aspect would be using a keyword link to navigate to another website. As long as the website is relevant to the content on your site then you can name the link anything you want but want to ensure you don't mislead people who click on it. And finally, creating anchor links on the webpage itself. Anchor links are basically links on a webpage which automatically scrolls to that part of the page. An example being the 5 anchor links at the top of this page. Another important aspect to remember is to not use the words "click here" when linking. It's just as easy to use a keyword instead and in my opinion looks a lot more professional.
An Example of using keywords in links:
1967 Chev (Anchor link on the same page) The Anchor text is used to point to a certain area of your page. Example - #1967Chev would be the anchor for an area which deals with that model of car. A good example is the top of this page with the different areas dealt with on this page. If you click on Title at the top it automatically takes you to that part of the page. The Anchor link is #Title, the name given to it is also Title. For more information on Anchor Links and how to use them go to www.w3schools.com.
Muscle Car Pictures (Would link to a page on your website) - www.1967 Chevrolet Camero.com/pictures.html
Chevrolet Camero Forum (Links to another website)
Once again though you want to make sure you don't over do it. Search engines look down on keyword harvesting. There is no rule on how many keywords you use but a good number people like to stick to 10-15 per page. What it comes down to is making your webpage not only SEO friendly but also human friendly. Once you've finished your webpage re-read it and try to look it from a visitor's point of a view. This should give you an idea on how your webpage will look to spiders and bots as well.
Site Map: There are two types of site maps which people use for their sites. One is a HTML page that acts as a directory for the pages on a website. Each page is automatically hyperlinked and is a very useful tool for your visitors. It can help your visitors find content pages they're looking for. It can also help them click into pages that might have otherwise been missed. The second Site Map is an xml file. By placing a formatted xml file Site Map on your web server, you enable Search Engine crawlers (like Google) to find out what pages are present and which have recently been changed, and to crawl your site accordingly. In order to use an XML file with a search like Google you have to ensure your site is verified. An easy way of doing this is to use Google Webmaster Tools. Once your site is verified you can submit your Site map. Google will then crawl and index your Site Map, it's also good practice to update this xml file when changing major content on your site. Googles spider or bots will also tell you if it finds any errors on the xml file and display them. This serves as a great tool as these errors could have an adverse effect on other search engines being able to crawl your website as well.
Before you start running all over the internet trying to find out how to build a Sitemap, I would strongly recommend going to xml-sitemaps. Here you can submit your site and it will give you some options on how often your site will be updated and then provide you with both an HTML Sitemap for your visitors to use and also an XML copy for the Major Search Engines.
Before moving onto the next part I would like to pass on a little bit of advice that was passed onto me and makes perfect sense. There's no use buying website hosting if you have no website to host. Also there's no practical value in putting a website up which has a flash background image with the words "site is currently under construction" or "Website being built sorry for the inconvenience". This is just bad web design and business practice. Even big companies won't do this while they build or upgrade a site. If you're going to upgrade a site with a new layout, then build the new layout first then upgrade the site. When you begin to upload the new layout or upgrade then it's understandable to advise that the site is currently being upgraded, but don't go to the effort of putting a "Site Under Construction" back ground on a new site, and to be perfectly honest, whose going to see it? If you're going to build a site from scratch then do so before hosting it. If someone like me wanted to look for sites under construction I would Google it. At no time would I query a search, go to a webpage that has my captured my interest and expect to see the words the "under construction". As fore mentioned this is just bad business practise and more importantly bad SEO. If you have been able to secure the domain name you wanted, then build your website first before paying money on hosting.
And one further little piece of advise, ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR WORK. You never know what can happen between the time of building your site and hosting it. ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR WORK so if you lose the master copy for what ever reason then you have a back up and don't lose all that hard work. From experience myself, I can honestly tell you it can be heart breaking.
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