ABC of SEO

A

ALT Tag

Often overlooked but incredibly important, the ALT tag

helps tell search engines and visually impaired users the

purpose of an image. It's a great chance to add some

important keywords to your code, but keep it sensible.

Remember the golden rule of SEO; never make a website for

a search engine, make it for your users. Spammed out alt

tags will only harm your optimisation, keep it below 4

words and make sure it makes logical sense.

alt="" src="../images/logo.gif" />alt="Something Logical"

/>

B

Bold Tag?

Never B always STRONG

and (bold and italics) are used purely for visual effect

and mean nothing to search engines, where as and are

semantics to add emphasis. Google will see something in a

tag as more important than something in a tag. However,

like everything in SEO it has to be used within reason,

making your entire content bold will not help your

rankings. The less times you use the tag on a page the

more importance the one or two keywords wrapped in a

strong tag will have.

C

Cache

This refers to a copy of a website stored on a search

engine. Google as well as other search engines will let

you view their current cache of a website via a link in

their listings. It is important to stay on top of when

your site was last cached, changes you make to your site

will not get picked up on until the search engine

includes them in their cache index.

D

Demographics

"Lenin said that people vote with their feet. Well,

that's what's happening. They either go, or they don't

go. It's all politics. It's all demographics." - Warren

Beatty

Demographics is crucial in any form of marketing,

understanding your potential market, their ages, sex,

race, income, location etc will help you lead a

successful marketing campaign and will result in a higher

conversion rate. AdWords and Adcenter, allow you to

target PPC ads at searchers who fit amongst a specific

demographic, doing this correctly can make the difference

between a good PPC campaign and a highly profitable PPC

campaign.

E

Everflux

Major search engine indexes are continually updating and

refreshing, Google coined this process 'everflux'.

Previous to this Google would update their index roughly

one a month and this was referred to as a 'Google Dance'.

F

Fresh Content

Some SEO firms see adding fresh content as simply

updating a page once and again, if your a webmaster and

you really want to rank highly in the search engines you

will need a consistent flow of original high quality

content. Firstly it builds the size of your site and

secondly it shows the search engines your content is

fresh and that people will want to read it. Low quality,

short and unoriginal content will not help and will only

jeopardise your rankings.

G

Google

Google truly is the key player in the search engine

world, it has revolutionised the internet and how people

use it. Google started as a brainchild of two Stanford

University students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998.

Now it has ventured into marketing, the browser wars,

phones and online software development.

H

Headings

Where's your heading at? Use headings accurately to

structure your content, improve readability and transmit

your site's message. Make sure you get your important

phrases in, but don't start cramming. Analyse the

importance of each phrase and fit with the appropriate

heading,

H1 being the most important and H6 being the least. You

don't need to use all 6 on one page, just as many as you

wish, also try and keep them in order so H1 first and H2

second. Using more than one H1 will take away from the

importance of the tag, so only use it once or twice and

make sure it is well written. I

Internal Linking

This refers to the process of linking to other pages on

the same site, it can help users navigate the site and

enable search engines to quickly find and crawl pages,

which may otherwise not be linked in the navigation or

footer. However, this is commonly misunderstood and a lot

of SEO companies see the need to link each of their

keywords, this isn't necessary and it will only water

down the importance of other links on the page and

confuse your users.

J

Javascript

Javascript is a client side scripting language, which is

embedded into HTML to add more dynamic features to a

website. Although Javascript itself isn't indexed by

search engines the HTML it controls is. So with the rise

of javascript libraries including jQuery and Mootools,

web developers are now able to add more interactivity and

animation to their sites without using Flash.

K

Keywords, Keywords, Keywords

* Why have you chosen them?

* Are they relevant?

* How many people are competing for them?

* How many people are searching for them?

* How much is your competition spending on them?

Just a few questions you really need to be asking

yourself at the start of your optimisation campaign. We

have attached a few helpful links below to help you on

your way to prosperous keyword research.

L

Link Building

Link building, when performed correctly is the process of

gathering high quality links from around the web, which

in hand show to the search engines that the site being

optimised is authoritative, relevant, and trustworthy.

A few tips to get you on your way..

* Build high quality content, get high quality links.

* Be creative with your link building, think of new ways

to gain high quality links, competitions, social

bookmarking, april fools etc.

* More links doesn't mean better links; it's all about

quality, not quantity!

* This is especially true for a new site, you need to

ensure your first set of links are from high quality

sites, if you plan on getting to page one anytime soon.

* Dmoz, although this has became a highly debatable

subject in SEO over the last 6 months, Dmoz is still very

much link worthy and authoritative.

* Never, ever, EVER use directory submission software or

companies.

There are many more examples and we aim to cover this

subject in much more detail in a new post during our SEO

season. M

Meta Tags

Meta tags appear in the section of an html document and

were a way of helping search engines analyse the content

of your site.

Some of the Meta Tags include:

* Meta Description

* Meta Keywords

* Meta Distribution

* Meta Author

* Meta Language

All but the first (meta description) are not worth the

time they take to implement into a site. Meta tags are no

longer seen as a worthwhile SEO technique and will make

no difference to your rankings. We have a slightly

controversial view on these, however from experience we

can honestly say that only the Meta description tag can

help an optimisation campaign. And that is purely to do

with the fact that it appears in your listing under your

title in the major search engines. Use it to gain

searcher's attention and give them a reason to click

through, mention your special offers, pricing, services

etc.

N

NoFollow

Nofollow is a link attribute used to prevent a link from

passing any link authority (PageRank, age etc) and is

commonly used on user generated sites, such as blogs and

forums. It was introduced by Google as a way to cut down

on blog comment spamming. However, some blogs chose to

remove this attribute and chose to reward their reader

with a link back if they take the time to comment, this

referred to a 'DoFollow'.

The nofollow link attribute looks like this:

rel="nofollow"

O

Organic Search Results

Most major search engine listings comprise of paid ads

and unpaid listings. The unpaid listings are formed using

the search engine's algorithm and are called the organic

search results. The organic search listings are selected

by relevancy, link data, domain name and arguably age.

Typically these are more popular than paid ads, hence why

they appear on the left hand side and have more space

compared to the paid adverts. Users also tend to see them

as a more reliable and relevant source, meaning they have

a higher click through rate. However, to appear on page

one in the organic search results you will either need a

high understanding SEO or a reliable firm.

P

PageRank

PageRank is Google's attempted scale at measuring a web

documents importance based on its link capital.

Google describing PageRank

"PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the

web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of

an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets

a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for

page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume

of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the

page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are

themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to

make other pages 'important'."

The PageRank formula is:

PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))

* PR= PageRank

* d= dampening factor (~0.85)

* c = number of links on the page

PR(T1)/C(T1) = PageRank of page 1 divided by the total

number of links on page 1, (transferred PageRank) For any

given page A the PageRank PR(A) is equal to the sum of

the parsed partial PageRank given from each page pointing

at it times by the dampening factor plus one minus the

dampening factor.

A variation of Google's PageRank appears in their

toolbar, this is often referred to as 'Toolbar PageRank'

and ranges from 1 to 10 (10 being the best), Google has

yet to disclose any kind of precise info of how they

determine a Toolbar PageRank value, it also updates

periodically, on average once every 3 months.

Q

Quality Links

These are the links you need to be aiming to achieve to

start ranking in the search engines.

A trusted link can be broken down into the following

categories.

* Relevance - The more relevant the link the more power

it has, if you were optimising a veterinary website,

links from internet marketing sites wouldn't carry as

much strength as links from somewhere like the RSPCA or

another veterinary clinic.

* Trusted source - Authoritative links are the best kind

of links. If you can build links from government or

educational site you will have your foot in the door.

However, this is no easy task, the best way to gain these

kind of links is to be creative and think on your feet.

See if your local council has any kind of local business

directory.

* Age - Search engines tend to trust links from well-

established sites over new websites.

* Amount of Links - The harder it is to gain a link the

more value that link will carry and the less likely that

your competitors will be able to get a link off of the

same site. Take into account the amount of external links

on that page, that's one of the best ways to judge the

strength of a link.

R

Reciprocal Links

This is where websites agree to trade links with one

another to try and build a false authority. They made

also use 3 way linking or other low quality link building

schemes to try and trick the search engines. Overall this

kind of link building is not recommended especially if

the site you are trading links with isn't relevant to

your industry. Google will pick up on the fact that it is

reciprocal and mark the link as a low quality link.

However, It is worth considering developing a resources

page where you can list useful websites and in case an

opportunity comes along to trade with an authoritative

and relevant website, you will have somewhere to place

their link without spamming your homepage or any other

important pages.

S

SERP

This is one of the SEO top buzzwords, SERP simply means

Search Engine Ranking Position and refers to where your

site is currently positioned in a search engine. You will

hear this thrown around a lot in the SEO playground and

you don't want to look like the dumb kid, pretending to

know what it means. It can be used in the following

contexts.

"I'm not sure what happened to my SERP's after I used

that directory submission service, I have fallen 10

pages."

T

Title Tag

Experts agree, us included, that this is the most heavily

weighed piece of on-site optimisation.

Here are some points to help you on the way to writing a

search engine and user friendly title for each page.

* Uniqueness - Each page title needs to unique for that

page, do not have the same title for any two pages.

* Length - Try to keep it below 70 characters, anything

over that will not only look messy but it will also get

ignored by the search engines.

* Logical and Descriptive - Sum up your site and try to

get your most important keywords in, however DO NOT spam

this, it appears in the search engine listings and

something like 'web design, website design, web

optimisation, search engine optimisation, SJL' will not

only get ranked lowly by Google it will also lower your

click-through rate. We would recommend something along

the lines of 'Web Design & Search Engine Optimisation

Specialists | SJL Web Design'.

U Usability

You may think usability and SEO are two completely

different things, but getting visitors to your sites is

only half the battle, the other half is getting those

conversions. If your site is complicated and your users

can't find their way around, the whole point of

optimising will become useless, because they will just

leave and you will have a rocket high bounce rate.

So take into account the usability of your site, ask

people who have never used it before just to browse it in

front of you, watch them carefully, but try not to put

them off. See if they become confused and take notes on

where they experience problems and what could be done to

improve them. If they can't find things like a link to

your contact page in less than 10 seconds your site may

be losing you potential enquiries.

V

Viral Marketing

Apart from sounding like some kind of allergic reaction

to a bad marketing campaign, viral marketing is an

effective way of promoting your brand identity and

increasing visitors to your website. Channels for viral

marketing include emails, YouTube and simply enough word

of mouth.

W

Wordpress

Wordpress is a popular blogging platform created by Matt

Mullenweg in 2003. Installing and maintaining a blog is

great way to build a transparency for your business and

forms a basis for trust between client and company. It

also helps by adding a source of fresh content, which

will help your site improve in the search engines.

Wordpress is easy to manage and with the abundant amount

plugins and templates available it is highly recommended

by us at SJL.

X

XHTML (Extensible HyperText Markup Language)

XHTML is a markup language that has the same depth of

expression as HTML, but also conforms to the XML syntax.

XHTML along with CSS has dramatically changed the way we

build websites, if you are serious about appearing high

in the search engines it is worth taking the time to get

the coding right, even if it means hiring someone to do

it for you. It may be tempting just to drop into tables

or even just use the slice tool on photoshop or

fireworks, however this is becoming increasingly outdated

and you will have to do twice the work to get anywhere in

the search engines.

Y

Yahoo!

We saw yahoo rise to fame during the dot-com bubble of

the early 00's. It was formed by Jerry Yang and David

Filo in 1994, who were also Stanford University students

like Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google.

During the last 7 years we have seen Yahoo fall behind

Google as the world's most favorite search engine.

Nowadays, Yahoo is heavily in the shadows of Google and

its fate has been hanging in the balance throughout 2008,

with multiple failed acquisition attempts by Microsoft.

Z

Zeitgeist

Well sorry, I guess. This is the best we could come up

with; Z isn't one of the easiest letters to put SEO terms

to. If you can think of anything better please drop us a

comment below and we will consider adding it.

Anyway, Zeitgeist is one of Google's tools for analysing

search trends over time, split by country. It is describe

by Google as providing 'search patterns, trends, and

surprises'. It can be a good tool for extensive keyword

research and we applaud for being with the letter Z.

It is pronounced 'tsIt-"gIst, 'zIt' if that helps and it

means 'the general intellectual, moral, and cultural

climate of an era.'

Article Written by Sam Logan, Senior Designer and SEO

Consultant at SJL Web Design.

Published by Sam Logan Designer for SJL Web Design

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?

expert=Sam_J_Logan

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/2124861