SEO 101

I have finally figured out the best way for me to organize my keywords and which pages I have to optimize when beginning a new project and thought I’d share my findings in case others find them useful.

1. I Print out the keyword list from Excel in a portrait view instead of landscape so I can make the rows larger to be able to write in the columns. This lets me have a place to make notes and highlight what I’ve used so I know what keywords need pages. I put the keywords that need pages in a list in an e-mail to the AM. I use the columns to write tick marks for how many times I’ve used a word so I know when I’m favoring a word and when I’m not using a word enough.

2. I type up a list in Word of all the pages in the site, place them in columns, and put them in boxes to make notes. I put the keywords that I can use for each page in these boxes for quick reference when I am on that page so I don’t have to keep looking at my keyword list. This also helps me figure out what pages could use more keywords. I then write these pages in a list in an e-mail to the AM.

3. I create an e-mail to the AM and leave it open while I optimize so I can make notes about keywords, pages, suggested links, problems in the site, etc.

4. I use different highlighters to color code my lists. I use pink to let me know what keywords I have used on my keyword list and what pages have keywords on my pages list. I use blue for when I have been informed to not use a certain keyword. (This is rare, though.)

I hope this has made sense. I am a visual person and I like seeing what I am doing. I have found that this system speeds up my production and lessens confusion. Please let me know if you have questions or what your system is. Any organizational skills you have may help me as well.

Thank you.

In experimenting, learning in class, and reading up on SEO, I have come across the uses and importance of Title Tags. We use Title Tags in the footer links, but what about images and other links? This is a great way to define what a link is about in a little more detail. A site could have three pages about one topic.

For example: A site could have a TMJ Questions page, a TMJ Symptoms page, and a TMJ Treatments page. A link on a page in content could just say “our TMJ patients are happy with their results,” and there could be a link using TMJ. However, this word link doesn’t say which page it is linked to. A Title Tag could then be used to say “About New York TMJ Treatments” or just “About TMJ Treatments” or “Cosmetic Dentistry TMJ Treatmetns.” This not only gives the user more information about where the link leads, but it also gives the search engine robots more information.

I have been informed that Alt Tags do not appear in Firefox. So, the image Alt Tags don’t help users when they hover their mice over the images, but I have noticed that the Title Tags show up when you hover over the images. Title Tags are a great source for images since they show up in Firefox! I thought it was neat when I noticed this.

We should discuss the possibility using Title Tags in more places on our web sites in future SEO meetings.

A recent addition to the Google arsenal, Google Knol, recently made its’ debut on beta. Google, always wanting to test the accuracy of submitted knowledge and the integrity of its’ users, invited a small number of authoritative writers to “Knol” on topics. Similar to Wikipedia in being able to submit and edit your own articles, the difference being no one else can edit your own personal entries.

The main benefit of Google Knol is being able to link the article to your website, in addition to linking to other articles you may have already Knol’ed about. There are rumors about Google using a spot in the search listings for Knol articles relevant to the search topic. This could be a good way to become an authoritative figure in the eyes of Google, increasing the traffic to your site with informative, well researched articles.

On the downside, we all know at the beginning Wikipedia articles were unreliable at best and completely untouchable as a reference for college essays. I expect Google will have more oversight in the submission process and will either not accept spam articles or will remove the offender from the system altogether.

Overall I hope that this will enable more knowledgeable and correct articles on a variety of sought after subjects to be available on the net. The only problem I foresee is that spammers could take advantage of the linking, forcing Google to remove the ability for users to link, resulting in free knowledge for Google with little benefit to the writer.

Google Webmaster Tools debuts Content Analysis, a new diagnostic feature to better index your pages and help webmasters better optimize their pages. Content Analysis specifies and provides a link to any pages that have problems. Since whatever irritates Google probably irritates other search engines such as Yahoo and MSN, so this feature isn’t only beneficial for Google’s spiders but to other search engine’s spiders. How wonderful is that? Google is helping us optimize webpages!

What Content Analysis does is pinpoint these problem pages and addresses both missing title tags and duplicate title tags. We all know that duplicate title tags are bad since those pages end up in the supplemental index. Missing title tags don’t help the spiders much when they are indexing through your page since it doesn’t tell them what your page is about.

Some more features that the Content Analysis offers is that it notifies you if your title tag and meta description tags are too long or too short. A long title tag can look bad when it gets chopped off in the middle of the search engines and if it is too short, it might not be informative to the spiders or the searchers.

Wait! There is more to this feature! What more can it help to optimize webpages you ask? Content Analysis also flags a page when the spiders cannot find anything to index on a page.

We will shortly test out this feature and Blog about what we think.

Google Webmaster Tools debuts Content Analysis, a new diagnostic feature to better index your pages and help webmasters better optimize their pages. Content Analysis specifies and provides a link to any pages that have problems. Since whatever irritates Google probably irritates other search engines such as Yahoo and MSN, so this feature isn’t only beneficial for Google’s spiders but to other search engine’s spiders. How wonderful is that? Google is helping us optimize webpages!

What Content Analysis does is pinpoint these problem pages and addresses both missing title tags and duplicate title tags. We all know that duplicate title tags are bad since those pages end up in the supplemental index. Missing title tags don’t help the spiders much when they are indexing through your page since it doesn’t tell them what your page is about.

Some more features that the Content Analysis offers is that it notifies you if your title tag and meta description tags are too long or too short. A long title tag can look bad when it gets chopped off in the middle of the search engines and if it is too short, it might not be informative to the spiders or the searchers.

Wait! There is more to this feature! What more can it help to optimize webpages you ask? Content Analysis also flags a page when the spiders cannot find anything to index on a page.

We will shortly test out this feature and Blog about what we think.

The internal link structure of a website allows you to spread the link power of your home page to the individual pages of your site.

If you have a number of websites linking into your home page, then your home page has a certain link power that can be spread to the other pages of your site.

If you link to 40 pages on your home page then each page will get 1/40 of the link power. If you link to only 10 pages, then each page will get much more link power passed to it (1/10).

The more link power a page receives, the more likely it is that the page will get high rankings on search engines. Your internal link structure allows you to direct search engines to your most important pages.

There are several things that you can do to improve the rankings of special pages on your website:

Keep the most important pages on your site within as few clicks as possible from your home page. The fewer clicks you need to get to a web page, the more importance it is given by the search engines.

Link to the pages for which you want to have high rankings from all relevant pages on your site using keywords that are highly relevant and targeted.

Try and use absolute links and add a nofollow attribute to all links that aren’t important for your search engine rankings.
Use your robots.txt file or the robots meta tag to exclude duplicate or irrelevant pages from being indexed.

Remove unnecessary links from your web pages to increase the importance of the relevant links. Check your website for 404 not found errors and redirect these old links to the most appropriate pages.

Once you have optimized the link structure of your website, keep consistently trying to get high quality links.

You will win half your SEO battle if your site starts off with an optimized internal and external link structure.
 

I came to Page 1 Solutions as a designer wanting to expand my knowledge beyond just design for web sites. I have noticed a few aspects of SEO that can be thought about in the design process and can be completed by the designer, which makes life a little easier for the SEOer.

Designers where blue glasses. They see web design through these glasses and every aspect is blue. Every aspect about a web design that they think about and see is blue. I started training with SEO and was told how to start optimizing pages. When I was given my first page, I was handed my standard issue yellow SEO glasses.

“Everything I see will be yellow,” I thought.

 But everything wasn’t yellow.

 ”Oh! By yellow, they meant green. I’m supposed to see everything as green,” I later decided.

I forgot that I was still wearing my blue designer glasses when I put on my yellow SEO glasses. I started seeing what holes in the sites needed to be filled with SEO and what needed to be fixed design wise in order for the design to flow. There were a couple mistakes here and there in the designs that were not consistent. I also started to see where the designers needed to think about SEO when designing a site and why designers used H1 tags with titles of the pages that didn’t have keywords. I started to understand how to blend the design and the SEO together to please both the designer and the SEOer. This is all due to the green glasses I wear.

I speak two languages now. Designer and SEO, though I’m still learning SEO. I’m not totally fluent.

The designers can start doing a couple things in their designs that would help the SEOers:

Adding the Meta Tags On All Pages

Some new sites don’t have the description and keywords tags on the pages. It would be nice not to have to copy and paste these tags on all the pages. The designers don’t need to add anything in them, but having them in the code would help out a great deal.

Using Key Words in the H1 Tags

Even if the H1 tags are changed later by SEO, it would be nice to start off with them using the keywords instead of having words that the search engines don’t want to see in them.

Having a Place for H1 and H2 Tags

Having a standard place in the design for H1 and H2 tags is helpful so SEO doesn’t have to mess with the design and add them in. Some sites have these tags, but don’t have them on every page. The H2 tag with the localizations on every page is a must for search engines.
Having an Editable Disclaimer

It’s easy to go in and change something to be editable, but it would be super great if the designer changed this area to be editable after it was applied to all the pages.

Making Sure There is a Disclaimer

Self explanatory, I believe.

Adding a Sitemap and a Disclaimer Page

Even if these pages don’t have anything in them, it is nice to have a place holder in the site for these pages and to have them in the footer links so SEO doesn’t have to copy and save as a page, rename, delete content, add the content, then add the link in the footer. It would be cool to just have to add the content.

 That’s about it… I guess. Design can’t do everything, but have a little help with the tags being in the code on the pages would be super terrific!

There has been a lot of discussion lately about “Universal Search”.  What does Universal Search mean and how can you use it to your advantage.   Google began talking about Universal Search over a year ago and has made some small steps toward implementing it.  We anticipate that over the coming months and years we will see further steps down the path of Universal Search in Google’s search results as well as the other major search engines.

 So what is Universal Search? 

 Google’s vision for Universal Search is to deliver a single, integrated set of search results based on all of the content sources in Google’s massive database – including blogs, news, maps, videos, images, articles, books, and text web pages.  The ultimate goal of this model according to Google is to break down the huge amount of information that exists on the web and to provide the very best answer – from all sources within Google’s index – each time a user enters a query.        For example, a user searching for information on Harry Potter may be interested in information related to the books, movies, character and the actor – not just web pages that mention the books or the movies. When Google fully implements Universal Search, Google search will deliver a single set of blended search results that includes links to blogs about Harry Potter, video clips from the movies, news reports about and images of the character and Daniel Radcliffe (the actor), the JK Rowling website, fan websites, links to Amazon and Barnes & Nobel where you can purchase books and DVDs online – all ranked in order of relevance to the query. Users will no longer have to visit several different Google search areas to find a wide array of information on the topic. 

How can I take advantage of Universal Search? 

As a Page 1 client, you already are well on your way to doing just that, but there is always more that you can do.  Following are just a few examples: 

• Blogs – Incorporating a blog in your website (or creating a separate blog outside your website) and actively blogging is, perhaps, the single most important thing you can do.  Blogs are actively searched and Google rewards active bloggers who regularly post topical substantive information and materials.  You can use your blog to post images and video clips as well as text.  You should know that Page 1 actively optimizes and promotes our clients’ blogs by registering them with all the major blog directories and search engines so they get the maximum possible traffic.
• Videos – Despite all the talk by certain competitors, videos have not made any real impact on the search results for people looking for cosmetic dentists, cosmetic surgeons, lasik surgeons or injury lawyers.  While eventually videos may begin showing up as part of the Universal Search results on Google and other major search engines, the real upside with video is “conversion”.  In short, well produced videos promoting your expertise and what makes your practice special can help you convert more people from your website into potential patients or clients.  Page 1 offers excellent video production capabilities – for about half the cost of some of our competitors.  In addition, our SEO team regularly registers all of our clients’ videos on YouTube as well as Google and Yahoo Video, just to name a few.  Please contact your account manager to see examples of our video production.
• Local Search Results – Google currently displays as many as ten local providers for certain queries.  Typically, these are seen at the top of the search results with a map showing office locations.  Page 1 has been actively promoting our clients on Google Local and Google Maps for the last couple of years.  If your website is not listed next to the map of local providers, call your account manager and we will help you improve your position.
• News – News is one of the most important elements of Universal Search.  Google already incorporates news stories into some search results.  The good news for you is that news stories rarely make it into the search results for local dentists, cosmetic surgeons, ophthalmologists or attorneys.  However, we can help you put your practice in a position so that you do show up in news results. 
• Images – Before and after images have never been more important for our cosmetic dentists and our cosmetic surgeons.  Not only are they essential conversion tools (converting visitors into prospective patient inquiries), they may eventually be incorporated into Google’s Universal Search results.  If you don’t have before and after photos on your website, add them now.  And, if you haven’t updated your before and after gallery recently, now is the time to do it.  Our SEO Team already optimizes and registers your images to ensure they are in Google’s database.  If you keep adding images, you are more likely to see positive results.

 At Page1 our SEO Team has been consistently following processes to ensure that our clients’ blogs, videos, websites and more will be included in Universal Search results when it is fully implemented.  We do all this as a matter of course to ensure that you get the best possible search results.

 If you have questions about Universal Search or would like to know how you can implement some of the ideas mentioned above, please contact your account manager and we will help you devise a strategy to do just that.