Blog archives for August, 2008

I sometimes wonder who I am to say that the experts are wrong, because they should know better than I, but do they really? Why should I be wrong and they right just because they call themselves SEO ‘experts’ or SEO ‘professionals’? I used to think that when I was younger, but now that I have grown up I realize that not all self-proclaimed ‘experts’ actually know more than I do, and most ‘professionals’ are only such because they make money from what they do. It doesn’t make them right!

So I would repeat my first paragraph, but it would just needlessly take up space. The reason that they are wrong is that your search engine results position, or your search engine ranking as many call it, is determined by how Google, or the other search engines, calculate your relevance from the mathematical formulae known as ‘algorithms’. From now on I will use ‘Google’ for all search engines, rather than keep writing ‘and the other search engines’. OK?

In other words, my point is that it is Google’s calculation that matters, not the relevance of your web page to the keyword. Let’s just accept that without argument, because it is a fact. The relevant point is that if we meet the needs of that algorithm then we will have met Google’s needs for a high listing, irrespective of the needs of the search engine user. So let’s get started.

Your search engine ranking is the result of a combination of factors. The three major common factors with respect to your web page content are:

1. The Title Tag Your html should include a title tag between the two HEAD tags. That can include your business name to promote your branding, but must include your keyword for the page. Google results pages, not domains, so each page must be optimized for a different keyword. Your title must include your keyword.

2. The Heading Tags. Your page content must be headed with headline for the content. That must include your page keyword (a keyword can be a single word or a long phrase) and be contained within H1 tags. Paragraphs can have their own headings, where you use H2 tags and secondary keywords that are used in each paragraph.

3. Keyword density. Don’t believe those that say you must have 3% keyword density (KD). That means 12 times in a 400 word passage, and if your keyword is, for example, ‘How to Improve Your Search Engine Ranking’, a KD of 3% would mean that 84 of your 400 words would be keywords (3 x 7 x 400/100). That is total nonsense, and your text would be in danger of being regarded as keyword spamming.

In fact you only need to include your keyword 3 times in a 400 word article, not 3%. The rest of your relevance would come from the rest of the text on your page. That is the purpose of Google’s LSI algorithm, or latent semantic indexing. You do not actually need any keywords on your web page, because Google will calculate what your page is about from the character strings in your text.

However you shouldn’t lose out, and it might help, if you use a maximum of 1% keyword density, or 4 instances (excluding the title and heading) in a 400 word page. But certainly no more

The biggest influence of these three will be the title and heading tags. After that we can look at your internal linking structure, and also external links to and from your website. However, these are the basic methods of improving your search engine ranking, and there are even better ways of achieving that. Your search engine position can be influenced tremendously by your internal linking structure, and that can have a significant influence on your search engine listing position.

Other than that, there are many specialized techniques such as the structure of your website and the way you lead search engine spiders around your site. That can be a significant factor in your search engine ranking, and while many people have heard of, and perhaps know how to properly use, the Title and Heading tags, few understand the negative significance of allowing a search engine crawler to hit a link to another page before it has a chance to check out the content on their home page.

There is a lot to be learned about your search engine position, and these tips should help you to achieve a higher search engine ranking and draw in an increasing amount of free traffic from search engines such as Google.

What? You mean you can’t just make me #1 in Google for all my keywords in 24 hours? You sigh, and then begin explaining the painful reality of virtual real estate. Oh sure, you could rank #1 for “Night Time Bird Watching In Outer Mongolia Without Flash Lights” but how many people are really going to go to the search engines for that? My wild guess would be painfully few though I’ve been wrong before.

Proper Search Engine Optimization takes far more than a couple of keywords strategically placed on a page. Don’t get me wrong, if your trying to win the war of the search engines you certainly want the right keywords as part of the package for website optimization; but that’s just the beginning. You also want keyword-focused backlinks (not swaplinks) pointed at your web pages that are preferably long-tail keywords in nature.

So how do you obtain such backlinks? Article marketing, video marketing, forum posts, & blog posts are excellent ways of doing this. However, if you are counting on hitting #1 overnight on the search engines it’s going to be one heck of a long night. Once you do get to a nice position in the search engines things really do start moving along. However, like with most anything worth obtaining, the slow meticulous process of daily pursuit goes much further with the Search Engine Optimization than throwing a couple of keywords on a page and hoping they stick.

So, if you’ve decided to get into Internet Marketing because of all the money that can be made, go invest your time in under-water basket weaving instead. You will find it much more profitable as well as refreshing.

However, if you’re able to maintain a practical approach to pursuing your dreams of making money on the Internet then this just might be the place for you. Only after you start generating a regularly consistent flow of traffic to your website will you see the results you are looking for. Once your Internet traffic results start showing up you can trust you are heading in the right direction. Just keep doing what your doing and the profits will follow.

Someone once said do what you love and the money will follow. Making money in Internet Marketing is certainly no exception to that rule