First of all, Google and most other search engines do NOT look at the META keyword tag. Many people say not to bother with it, but I use the META keyword tag and I place my keyword phrases in it. Here’s why. I use this tag to help me remember what keyword phrases I am optimizing the page for. You’ll find this to be a big help later when you have a lot of pages and have forgotten what keyword phrases you were trying to optimize the page for in the first place.
For the META description tag, keep your most important keyword phrase near the beginning of the sentence and make this tag a full sentence.
Do NOT use bold or italic keyword phrases in the first sentence on the page, but DO use your most important keyword phrase in the first sentence, but not the first word.
By all means, use your keyword phrases in your headings, (H1, H2 and H3).
Start putting keyword phrases in bold in the second paragraph.
Put your keywords or keyword phrases in italics a few times AFTER the first usage of the keyword. Never let the first usage of your keyword phrases be in Italics.
Use keywords in ALT tags.
It’s very important to get other sites to use your most important keyword phase for your page in any inbound links. Of course, you are not in control of how other sites link to you, but work hard to get them to use your keyword phrase. Most sites will link to your home page, so give them the most important keyword phrase you are optimizing your home page for.
When you are linking from any page back to your home page, use your most important keyword phrase in the link. When your home page is linking to any other page, use the keyword phrase in that link that the other page is being optimized for.
Don’t plan on getting much (if any) help by putting keywords or keyword phrases in your left Nav panel. Google likes keywords in full sentences. Putting the sentence in a paragraph is even better. By the way, a sentence according to Google is three or more words starting with a capital letter and ending with a period or other punctuation. Stop words such as:
“I,” “a,” “the,” and “of” do NOT count as one of your three words.
Follow these rules and your Web site will make a big jump in its relevancy for your keyword phrases. Following these rules will NOT boost your PageRank.
To be #1 or even in the top 10 on the search engines your relevance for a given keyword phrase is much more important than your PageRank.
For example, you could have a PageRank of 10 and still not show up in the top 100 sites when someone is searching for “peanut butter sandwiches” unless of course, your page is optimized for (and has a high relevance for) the phrase “peanut butter sandwiches.”
One final point: Use your keyword phrase in an H1, H2 or H3 headline followed by a keyword-rich paragraph and then repeat this with another H1, H2 or H3 headline and another keyword-rich paragraph. And of course repeat this again.
Use this format in addition following the 10 rules above and you will have a page with a high relevance for your keyword phrases.
Don’t try to optimize a page for more that two or three keyword phrases and always optimize for keyword phrases and NOT keywords. After all, the keyword is included within the keyword phrase. Most people don’t search for just one word any more anyway.
I have seen pages rank #1 with keyword densities form 1% to 20%, but I usually try to have a keyword phrase density of between 2% to 6%. Sometimes I go up to 10%.
Craige Stacey has been studying search engines optimization as a hobby and has achieved some very good search engine positions in the past for membership website software.
Driving Dealings to Your Website and to Your Bed and Breakfast is 2 Sides of the Same Mint
Driving traffic to your internet site or to your hotel requires good planning and lots of optimisation both for your site and for your motel. The optimization for your website will go via a established SEO Supporter and the optimization for your bed and breakfast is mostly done by the motel itself, a good example of a Purple Cow in hotels is the Fox Hotel in Copenhagen, which had a total redesign by creative people and was the base of the launch of the new VW Fox in Denmark.
The first affair to do is to get a great address, for your web site this means getting a great PHP ISP and a solid domain, for your bed and breakfast, this means having a prominent address in the town where your motel is situated, desirable in the real center of the city.
Having a great address for your bed and breakfast lands lots of visitors just by itself. For your internet site this is not so easy, you demand outstanding rankings in search engines and to find these you will require to do search engine optimisation. A properly optimized web site will bring you tons of visitors to your website, visitants who are possible clients at your hotel.
SEO in the traveling industry is really difficult and you will need the best SEO Company to do the planning and execution of all jobs involved in the action. You must also be aware that SEO demands time, so solitaire is a virtue.
Basically SEO (AKA: Search Engine Optimization) is the process of going through your web pages and editing them with search engines in mind. For example a web page with bad SEO would have broken link, no meta tags, and text for images. So how would I fix this? Go to the webpage connect the links correctly, add meta tags, and get rid of the images and type the text.
So should you invest your money and time into SEO? And the answer is yes. Having no SEO is one of the biggest mistakes any website owner can make and with so much competition on the web these days for traffic you have to do everything possible to make your website the best in its niche and SEO is one of those things and possibly the easiest.
So think about this Google gets millions of visitors everyday and imagine when someone searches a term you have on your website. And your websites on the first page results. Would you pass up that huge traffic opportunity? No, of course not but you have a choice take the 10-20 minutes to do SEO and 100% you will see your Google, Yahoo, and MSN page rank go up also you will see your traffic stats rise dramatically and make some extra money or don’t take the time with SEO and lose a lot of traffic to your website resulting in less money. So what’s going to be your choice SEO or no?
Search engine optimization is THE most cost effective way for a company to market their products and services. Below are 5 extremely valuable search engine optimization tips:
1. Content is Key
Webmasters are extremely concerned with optimizing their code and as a result, they often forget about optimizing the content. As optimization tips go, this is one you should pay close attention to. The first 200 words of your home page should be loaded with keywords, this includes your headline. Some search engines, particularly those that ignore meta tags, will actually use the first few lines of text (including the headline) as your site description.
2. Utilize Static HTML
You don’t need a “dynamic” website unless you have dynamic content, such as airline seat availability and pricing which needs to be dynamically published from a database because it constantly changes. You may store your website in a database but you’re better off publishing it as a static HTML website. It’s cheaper, the pages will download faster, and search engines will find it easier to comprehensively index your website.
The less HTML code you have, the better, as it makes it easier and faster for the search engine to index your page. Aim for a total page weight of 50 KB for any page (that’s including graphics). Certainly, anything over 100 KB is going to be slow, and some search engines don’t like pages that are over 100 KB.
3. The Title Tag is Critical
The title tag is the single most important piece of content for people who search. Keep it short: Don’t have more than 60 characters (with spaces), which is roughly 8-10 words. Lead with the most important careword for that particular page. Always start off with what is specific about the page and move to what is general. Many websites begin their title with their brand or organization name, and then follow with what is unique about the page. (This is a very common mistake, so check out your website.)
4. Optimize Your Images
This is another optimization tip that many people forget about. However, through use of your “alt” image attribute tag, you can slip in an extra keyword phrase or two that describes the picture users are about to see. The text only shows up when the user has turned off the ‘view images’ option in their browser or the image fails to load. But some search engine robots will pick it up too and the extra keywords could help your ranking. So take a few seconds to implement this optimization tip on your site and you could see improved results soon.
5. Why You Shouldn’t Optimize Your Own Site
While we have given you some basic optimization tips to help you quickly boost your search engine ranking, we still recommend that you hire a Search Engine Optimization professional for the best results. Search engines change their guidelines regularly, making it impossible for any one or two people to stay on top of all the changes while still running their business. What was a great optimization tip yesterday, could get your site blacklisted today. Your SEO professional will watch over your site as if it was our own, ensuring your site is always running in peak form. For example, we predicted many of the guideline changes Google made in November of 2003, saving many of our customers from the massive fall in rankings most experienced.
About the Author
Carmen is the VP Client Relations of Ms. SEO Inc., a Calgary based Search Engine Optimization & Internet Marketing Company.
Ms. Seo Inc. works with their sister company Ms. Hype Inc., a Calgary Web Design Company, to offer their clients a powerful online presence.
