Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Before you can understand how SEO works, you first have to know what it is.

Organic, or natural, SEO is a method used to make a web site more visible on the Internet. The optimization of a site simply means using techniques which allow each page of your site to be found by the computer robots that visit your site - and at the same time - to be appealing, informative and interesting to human visitors.

Here`s the problem. There is so much information available on SEO (both bad and good), that you can very easily experience information overload. So the first step of my SEO success formula is:

1. Don`t Believe Everything You Read. There is a ton of outdated and inaccurate information regarding SEO. Therefore, my advice would be, when it comes to SEO, listen to people whom have a reputation of knowing what they`re talking about - and the background and results to back it up.

A few of the best SEO experts around include Shari Thurow, Jill Whalen and Danny Sullivan. If you read and follow their advice, you will never go wrong.

2. Do Your Research. You would be amazed at how many marketers attempt to optimize their site`s without doing an iota of research. I`m serious. I`ve seen marketers trying to optimize their website`s using keyword phrases that don`t even exist. So what`s wrong with that approach?

Well, if the keyword phrase doesn`t exist, that means that no one is searching for it.

And if no one is searching for your keyword phrase, they`re not going to find your website.

That`s why it`s important to use effective and proven SEO tools such as Overture`s keyword optimization tool:

Keyword Selector Tool

...and Wordtracker:

Keyword services for professional search engine optimization

These tools will give you an idea of what keyword phrases people are searching for, and give you a decided advantage when optimizing your website.

3. Build An SEO-Friendly Website. One of the most important things you can do when building your website is to help the search engines to like you. That means staying away from Flash sites and frames. These things are simply not search engine friendly. Nowadays, the current most preferred style of website design is CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).

Many unscrupulous website designers don`t know a thing about SEO, and they could care less whether or not you rank well in the search engines. Again, do your research, before having your website built, and you`ll save yourself a lot of money and avoid potential headaches.

4. Don`t Keep Repeating Keyword Phrases. I see this a lot. For example, let`s suppose your website sells pet products. Contrary to popular belief, it`s not necessary to mention the keyword phrase "pet products" fifty times, when writing your website`s description. This is considered spamming, and could get you into trouble with the search engines.

So how many times should you mention your keyword phrase when writing your site`s description? Once or twice is fine. Anything more than that will send up a red flag to the search engines.

5. Don`t Use Hidden Text. What`s hidden text? Hidden text is text on your website that is displayed in such a way as to not be easily readable. For example, setting the font color to be the same as the background color of the web page, thereby rendering the text invisible unless the user highlights it.

Hidden text is a notorious spamming technique, designed to fill a page with keywords that a search engine will recognize but are invisible to a human visitor. Be warned, however. This is considered "Black Hat" SEO, and Google has taken serious steps to prevent this technique, by parsing the colour of text as it indexes it, and checking to see if it is similar to or the same colour as the page background, and penalizing websites by giving those pages much lower rankings.

There are of course many other things you should and shouldn`t do to optimize your website. However, if you follow the 5 steps set forth in this article, you`ll be well on your way to building a search engine friendly website.

Dale King

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If you`re tired of all the money-making
hype, lies and scams...read this!
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Dale,

Good article with some good points.

I don`t know if there is any data to back up that statement... well, I`ll just say I do not agree with your statement.

If a "web designer" - or any person who creates or maintains a web presence for a client - is to stay in business or be successful, he/she does need to incorporate at least the basics of SEO. For if the client`s web site is not seen the web designer`s work is not seen.

~Roland

 

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Web Design | Best Beef Jerky | ecommerce articles | Follow vwebworld on Twitter

I`ll second Roland, that`s an unfair generalization.

A bad developer wouldn`t care about the success of his/her client.
A professional is concerned with your success now and in the future.

Because of more than a few bad apples, the SEO industry in general has a less than stellar reputation.

That`s hardly a secret.

However, to lump everyone into the same category was indeed an unfair generalization.

I will rephrase that particular sentence.

Dale King

-------------------------

If you`re tired of all the money-making
hype, lies and scams...read this!
Click here for more details!

SEO is a moving target. Search engine change their algorithms or how they each use data from a website.

There are some basic SEO tasks that should be implemented that also have been fairly successful over time.

One of the first steps is to determine your target keywords... and do some research on them.

Where to use those key words - your url, page url, page title, description, links (internal and in-bound), h1, h2...tags, bold content, content, etc.

However, the bottomline (when creating a website) spend time thinking about your target market/customer and design the site for them. If you communicate your message effectively to that market search results should also follow.

Forget about page rank (PR), create and include content and links for your target market... today, highly relevant content is important.

~Roland

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Web Design | Best Beef Jerky | ecommerce articles | Follow vwebworld on Twitter

Well I am new to the forum but a regular visitor of this site. Just saw this post abt SEO. few things to keep in mind are

- Keywords in H2-H6 headline tags. H1 headline tags appear to have little effect.

- Keywords in image filenames and image alt attributes.

- Keywords in the domain name.

- Strong or bold tags appear to have a slight effect.

- Web pages that use very few or no parameters in URL’s (?id=123, etc.) tend to get ranked higher.

- PageRank are imp.

 

and DKING u r right when u say

"Because of more than a few bad apples, the SEO industry in general has a less than stellar reputation."

 

 

 

If you are an e-commerce site ... than a shopping cart / data base that is proven to succeed in SEO is critical. A shopping cart that not only creates the pages in cgi, php, asp .. but also creates a html page for every product .. is a sure winner for SEO. A shopping cart that the search engines "like" and will index the different products in your store. ... not just your site.

Does your shopping cart do that? (rhetorical question)

When is comes to google content is king. Site age is also a critical factor that most people over look. Have you ever heard of the google sandbox? I have heard varied reports on the time frame for newer sites to be fully indexed but rest assured it does exist.  After properly coded content and time inbound links are the only factor that will raise your rankings in google. That is why many SEOs will purchase existing expiring domain names. Its alot faster to rank a site that already has time and inbound links.

Good luck! 

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ourmonmouth.com Full-Service Internet Solution Provider and Business/Community directory of Monmouth County New Jersey.

Well, maybe this will take care of the issue re: "key words and key phrases".

https://www.imediaconnection.com/content/16520.asp

"A new way of delivering search results will make it easier on searchers, but will it eliminate the need for SEO? A 24/7 Real Media SVP discusses the issue. ...

...What if you could deliver search results based not on exactly matching words or phrases, but instead on context and relevance? What if the right site were delivered to the right user, even if he or she misspelled a word, or didn`t even pick the right keyword or phrase? ...

... Why is LSI considered to be an improvement over word-based methods? Because word-based methods deliver irrelevant along with relevant results, and even relevant results won`t be delivered without the right keyword on both the user and web page side of the equation. LSI solves the basic problem of monkey see, monkey don`t. ... "

Gives you something to think about .... Hmmmmm .....

I would have to disagree with your statement.  I have a blog, where my first post was July 7, 2007.  My pagr rank is 0, yet I am on the first page of Google with several competitive keywords.  When you type in my domain name into google you will find 744 references.  So if the SEO is done properly using a blog, you can bypass a lot of the "Old School" It will take time stuff.


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Arsenal Marketing
WEB 2.0 Internet Marketing for Business
http://www.arsenalmarketing.com
Joe@arsenalmarketing.com

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