How to build a Traffic-Worthy Site
One of the most important (and often overlooked) subjects in SEO is building a site deserving of top rankings at the search engines. A site that ranks #1 for a set of terms in a competitive industry or market segment must be able to justify its value or risk losing out to competitors who offer more. Search engines' goals are to rank the best, most usable, functional, and informative sites first. By intertwining your site's content and performance with these goals, you can help to ensure its long-term prospects in the search engine rankings.
Usability - Usability represents the ease-of-use inherent in your site's design, navigation, architecture, and functionality. The idea behind the practice is to make your site intuitive so that visitors will have the best possible experience on the site. A whole host of features figure into usability, including:
Design - The graphical elements and layout of website have a strong influence on how easily usable the site is. Standards like blue, underlined links, top and side menu bars, logos in the top, left-hand corner may seem like rules that can be bent, but adherence to these elements (with which web users are already familiar) will help to make a site usable. Design also encompasses important topics like visibility & contrast, affecting how easy it is for users to interest the text and image elements of the site. Separation of unique sections like navigation, advertising, content, search bars, etc. is also critical, as users follow design cues to help them understand a page's content. A final consideration would also take into account the importance of ensuring that critical elements in a site's design (like menus, logos, colors, and layout) were used consistently throughout the site.
Information Architecture - The organizational hierarchy of a site can also strongly affect usability. Topics and categorization impact the ease with which a user can find the information they need on your site. While an intuitive, intelligently designed structure will seamlessly guide the user to their goals, a complex, obfuscated hierarchy can make finding information on a site disturbingly frustrating.
Navigation - A navigation system that guides users easily through both top-level and deep pages and makes a high percentage of the site easily accessible is critical to good usability. Since navigation is one of a website's primary functions, provide users with obvious navigation systems: breadcrumbs, alt tags for image links, and well-written anchor text that clearly describes what the user will get if he or she clicks a link. Navigation standards like these can drastically improve usability performance.
Functionality - To create compelling usability, ensure that tools, scripts, images, links, etc. all function as they are intended and don't provide errors to non-standard browsers, alternative operating systems, or uninformed users (who often don't know what/where to click).
Accessibility - Accessibility refers primarily to the technical ability of users to access and move through your site, as well as the ability of the site to serve disabled or impaired users. For SEO purposes, the most important aspects are limiting code errors to a minimum and fixing broken links, making sure that content is accessible and visible in all browsers and without special actions.
Content - The usability of content itself is often overlooked, but its importance cannot be overstated. The descriptive nature of headlines, the accuracy of information and the quality of content all factor highly into a site's likelihood to retain visitors and gain links.
Overall, usability is about gearing a site towards the potential users. Success in this arena garners increased conversion rates, a higher chance that other sites will link to yours, and a better relationship with your users (fewer complaints, lower instance of problems, etc.). For improving your knowledge of usability and the best practices, I recommend Steve Krug's exceptionally impressive book, "Don't Make Me Think"; possibly the best $30 you can spend to improve your website.
Usability - Usability represents the ease-of-use inherent in your site's design, navigation, architecture, and functionality. The idea behind the practice is to make your site intuitive so that visitors will have the best possible experience on the site. A whole host of features figure into usability, including:
Design - The graphical elements and layout of website have a strong influence on how easily usable the site is. Standards like blue, underlined links, top and side menu bars, logos in the top, left-hand corner may seem like rules that can be bent, but adherence to these elements (with which web users are already familiar) will help to make a site usable. Design also encompasses important topics like visibility & contrast, affecting how easy it is for users to interest the text and image elements of the site. Separation of unique sections like navigation, advertising, content, search bars, etc. is also critical, as users follow design cues to help them understand a page's content. A final consideration would also take into account the importance of ensuring that critical elements in a site's design (like menus, logos, colors, and layout) were used consistently throughout the site.
Information Architecture - The organizational hierarchy of a site can also strongly affect usability. Topics and categorization impact the ease with which a user can find the information they need on your site. While an intuitive, intelligently designed structure will seamlessly guide the user to their goals, a complex, obfuscated hierarchy can make finding information on a site disturbingly frustrating.
Navigation - A navigation system that guides users easily through both top-level and deep pages and makes a high percentage of the site easily accessible is critical to good usability. Since navigation is one of a website's primary functions, provide users with obvious navigation systems: breadcrumbs, alt tags for image links, and well-written anchor text that clearly describes what the user will get if he or she clicks a link. Navigation standards like these can drastically improve usability performance.
Functionality - To create compelling usability, ensure that tools, scripts, images, links, etc. all function as they are intended and don't provide errors to non-standard browsers, alternative operating systems, or uninformed users (who often don't know what/where to click).
Accessibility - Accessibility refers primarily to the technical ability of users to access and move through your site, as well as the ability of the site to serve disabled or impaired users. For SEO purposes, the most important aspects are limiting code errors to a minimum and fixing broken links, making sure that content is accessible and visible in all browsers and without special actions.
Content - The usability of content itself is often overlooked, but its importance cannot be overstated. The descriptive nature of headlines, the accuracy of information and the quality of content all factor highly into a site's likelihood to retain visitors and gain links.
Overall, usability is about gearing a site towards the potential users. Success in this arena garners increased conversion rates, a higher chance that other sites will link to yours, and a better relationship with your users (fewer complaints, lower instance of problems, etc.). For improving your knowledge of usability and the best practices, I recommend Steve Krug's exceptionally impressive book, "Don't Make Me Think"; possibly the best $30 you can spend to improve your website.
Most Important SEO Tricks
1. New Domain? Old Domain?
Do not purchase a brand new domain unless you absolutely have to. Google now has an “aging delay for all domains” check. New domains will be considered unreliable and need to “age” before it gains importance in the google index. If you had to use a brand new domain, expect to see 9-12 month delay before you are able to achieve top 20 position in any keyword. The trick is buy an old or expired domain.
2. Don’t go for the popular keywords.
Do not try to tackle the popular keywords such as “travel” “computer”, instead add a word before or after the keyword such as “travel tips” or “computer news”. Many top 20 positions in less popular keywords is a thousand times better than a top 200 position in a extremely popular keyword.
3. Design your site to be “spider-friendly”.
Remember spiders can not fill out forms or click on flash menus. Always have an alternative HTML link that spiders can travel through to crawl your entire site. The best way to go about this is have a sitemap that contains links to every page of your site. Google has a special place for web masters to submit their sitemaps. Use it! https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/sitemaps
4. Only link out to non-spammer, non-linkfarm and quality sites.
The truth is, it doesn’t matter who links to you, you can have a thousand spammer and link farms that have links to your site, and it won’t affect your rank with google. But if your site contains links to spammer and link farm sites, your site will also be marked as spammer or link farm. So the trick is, watch who you link to.
5. Put your most important keyword in your url and title tag.Search engines such as google see your url as one of the most important factor for determining relevancy. For example, the top 20 positions for the keyword “wallpaper” are occupied by sites that contain the word “wallpaper” in their url. So if you want to achieve top 20 position in any keyword, the fastest way would be having that keyword in your url. Title tags are also very important for search engines, especially the first few words, put your most important keyword in the front of your site title.
6. Use keywords for folder names and file names.
This trick has became very well known recently. Use your relevant keywords for your sub-folder names and file names. For example if you have a web page called “contact_us.html” and your website is about selling “teddy bears”. Then use “contact_us_for_teddy_bears.html” as your file name. Do the same thing for your folders and you will have a keyword rich url.
7. Make sure your site loads fast and rarely go down.
This may sound silly, but whenever a google bot or any other search engine spider visit your site. They will test your page load speed. If your site loads very slowly, your page rank will suffer as your site is now considered unfit for browsing. Also if your site is frequently down, your page rank will go down real fast.
8. Never rename your webpage unless your site is new
For established and popular websites, renaming your webpages will kill your rank in the search engines, you are essentially starting from scratch in terms of SEO. So if you are redesigning your site, remember keep the old file names.
9. Never implement ANY cloaking methods on your site
Site cloaking was popular a couple years ago. It means show one version of content to your visitors and show a different version of content to the search engine spiders. There are of course legitimate reasons for doing this. But due to popular usage by spammer sites, it is now considered instant ban if you cloak your site this way. Do not think the search engines will not find out. Google now frequently send out unknown bots from unknown ips for the sole purpose of detecting cloaked sites.
10. Do not over-optimize
Remember the most important asset for your site is not your search engine ranking, but your users. Never SEO your site to the extent of hurting user experience. Over-optimization for search engines may help you in the short-terms but you will wake up one day and find out that your site only have “visitors” but not “users”.
Do not purchase a brand new domain unless you absolutely have to. Google now has an “aging delay for all domains” check. New domains will be considered unreliable and need to “age” before it gains importance in the google index. If you had to use a brand new domain, expect to see 9-12 month delay before you are able to achieve top 20 position in any keyword. The trick is buy an old or expired domain.
2. Don’t go for the popular keywords.
Do not try to tackle the popular keywords such as “travel” “computer”, instead add a word before or after the keyword such as “travel tips” or “computer news”. Many top 20 positions in less popular keywords is a thousand times better than a top 200 position in a extremely popular keyword.
3. Design your site to be “spider-friendly”.
Remember spiders can not fill out forms or click on flash menus. Always have an alternative HTML link that spiders can travel through to crawl your entire site. The best way to go about this is have a sitemap that contains links to every page of your site. Google has a special place for web masters to submit their sitemaps. Use it! https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/sitemaps
4. Only link out to non-spammer, non-linkfarm and quality sites.
The truth is, it doesn’t matter who links to you, you can have a thousand spammer and link farms that have links to your site, and it won’t affect your rank with google. But if your site contains links to spammer and link farm sites, your site will also be marked as spammer or link farm. So the trick is, watch who you link to.
5. Put your most important keyword in your url and title tag.Search engines such as google see your url as one of the most important factor for determining relevancy. For example, the top 20 positions for the keyword “wallpaper” are occupied by sites that contain the word “wallpaper” in their url. So if you want to achieve top 20 position in any keyword, the fastest way would be having that keyword in your url. Title tags are also very important for search engines, especially the first few words, put your most important keyword in the front of your site title.
6. Use keywords for folder names and file names.
This trick has became very well known recently. Use your relevant keywords for your sub-folder names and file names. For example if you have a web page called “contact_us.html” and your website is about selling “teddy bears”. Then use “contact_us_for_teddy_bears.html” as your file name. Do the same thing for your folders and you will have a keyword rich url.
7. Make sure your site loads fast and rarely go down.
This may sound silly, but whenever a google bot or any other search engine spider visit your site. They will test your page load speed. If your site loads very slowly, your page rank will suffer as your site is now considered unfit for browsing. Also if your site is frequently down, your page rank will go down real fast.
8. Never rename your webpage unless your site is new
For established and popular websites, renaming your webpages will kill your rank in the search engines, you are essentially starting from scratch in terms of SEO. So if you are redesigning your site, remember keep the old file names.
9. Never implement ANY cloaking methods on your site
Site cloaking was popular a couple years ago. It means show one version of content to your visitors and show a different version of content to the search engine spiders. There are of course legitimate reasons for doing this. But due to popular usage by spammer sites, it is now considered instant ban if you cloak your site this way. Do not think the search engines will not find out. Google now frequently send out unknown bots from unknown ips for the sole purpose of detecting cloaked sites.
10. Do not over-optimize
Remember the most important asset for your site is not your search engine ranking, but your users. Never SEO your site to the extent of hurting user experience. Over-optimization for search engines may help you in the short-terms but you will wake up one day and find out that your site only have “visitors” but not “users”.
Tricks to Get into Top 10 of SERP's
1. If you don't want too much competition from other SEO's, choose your keywords precisely.
For example, Instead of keyowrd Loan choose keywords like Bank Loan, Equity Loan, Student Loan, Home Loan etc.
Order of keyword also matter for search engines. Search engine treats "Loan Equity" and "Equity Loan" as different keywords.
2. Best seo practice is to get at least one of your primary keywords in domain or sub domain name of your website.
You can use hyphens (-) to separate multiple keywords.
For example: seo-service, seo-guidelines, free-seo each cover two keyords.
3. Get your second or third keywords in your directory name and filename.
For example http://www.hiddentricks.com/seo/free-tips.html is best for keyword "free seo tips" , "seo hidden tricks" or "free seo tricks"
4. Keep your webpage free from any syntax error, declare document type at the beginning and validate your HTML and CSS because search engine don't like pages with too many errors.
5. Give a short Title in of your page in 3-9 words (60-80 characters) maximum in length containing your primary keyword.
Remember it will be displayed in search results so choose wisely.
6. Try to include your most important keyword phrases in heading tags on your page if you can but keep in mind it should not be exactly same as title of your page.
You can use (H1 H2 H3) tag for specifying anything important.
To reduce size of heading use CSS.
7. Specify Meta keywords in heading of document. Limit it to 15 to 20 words. Although not all the search engines give importance but there is no harm doing it.
Search engine like Yahoo still give it importance.
8. Write Your Meta Description tag attractive containing keywords because it will appear on the search engine result pages.
9. Use text for navigation menu instead of using images or Java scripts.
10. Try to include your most important keyword in hyperlinked text and text and text that immediately precedes or follows the hyperlink.
Do not use same keyword always use synonyms at few places.
Jusk like instead of seo, I have use search engine optimization at many places on this page.
11. If you are using images then use "alt" attribute to describe your image with proper keyword.
12. One of the best webmaster guideline is to submit sitemap of your website to make sure all pages of your website are indexed by search engine crawlers.
13. Keep size of your webpages less than 50KB so it is downloaded fast and visitors don't have to wait for long.
For good SEO site page size ideal should be 15KB.
14. Try to avoid your content in Flash, frame, images, java script because crawler find it very difficult and it is against seo tips and guidelines.
15. Don't use dynamic url because it don't contain keywords so its not search engine friendly.
If you are using any script which shows dynamic pages then make sure at least it should include one keyword.
16. Don't try to spam and never use methods like cloaking, keyword spamming or doorway pages.
Many seo advices to have multiple domain name and link each other but according to our SEO tips and guidelines search engine can penalize you for this.
Instead of that try to add more quality content to your existing website.
17. Submit your website only once to google, Yahoo, AltaVista and other search engines and open directory.
Don't use any script or website for automatic submission.
18. If your website contents changes very often then provide visitor with Newsletter and RSS feed.
19. Write articles on website related to yours having higher page ranking and leave your websites link.
20. Get link from other sites related to yours, search engine consider it as vote in your favour.
By following our top 20 tips and some other guidelines provided by us you can get in top 10 position in SERP's.
Tips to Optimize Meta Descriptions
- Meta description tags may appear in the search results below your page title. Descriptions should be formatted in compete sentences so they read well to humans. Google displays about 150 to 160 characters from meta description tags in their search results. If your description runs past 160 characters they will cut it short and add ... at the end of their listing.
- Each meta description should be unique on a per page basis. If you have a large website you can automatically generate descriptions using formulas to include things like item price, shipping details, or any sales offers. If your site is smaller it is best to edit each meta description by tag, especially on your key pages.
- Meta descriptions should compliment your page titles by helping you differentiate from the competition and appeal to your target audience using similar touch-points.
- Your descriptions should use slightly different word orders and keywords than what you use in the page title. Some examples:
- If a page title uses the plural version of the word the description can use the singular version
- If a page title uses an acronym the meta description can use the full version of the phrase
word order should be changed where it makes sense - If SEO Book was in my page title my meta description might include something like leading book on search engine optimization
- If you do not have a meta description tag or your description is irrelevant to the search query search engines may grab a snippet of text from your page to describe your listing. If you do not like the snippet they grab you can either create a meta description tag or edit the part of your page that they are inserting into the search results. After their next crawl of your page they should update your snippet.
SEO Tips for Launching a New Website
- Having a Reasonable Goal in Mind: Having a reasonable goal means understanding that depending on your strategy, resources and competency you will either have to spend lots of time fine-tuning your campaign, or pay someone else to. Most competitive keywords take up to a year to secure with consistent optimization applied. Hence, managing expectations means understanding the competitive thresholds for your keywords and the degree of trust required for a website to “break loose” and start climbing over competitors.
With the competitive landscape becoming more challenging by the day, the range of competitors fighting for topical relevance and keyword positioning can overwhelm those who are easily discouraged and seeking short-term gratification. There are only tens spots available for any given keyword; and depending on if those keywords are candidates for commerce determines how many companies, businesses or individuals will have them locked in their sights. The idea is to target keywords within your reach initially, but build the more competitive keywords into the site architecture, link structure and off page SEO to brand each page with a purpose, which leads to the next point. - Create Pages for Specific Purposes – Just because visitors arrive does not ensure success. You need compelling content infused with overtones of intent. Instead of overwhelming visitors with a bland one-size-fits-all approach, try segmenting your traffic by offering one specific conversion objective per page; unify your message, images & call to action. Search engines look at singular and plural keywords in a unique fashion. For example, just because you rank for one variation of a keyword does not ensure you will rank automatically for the stemmed or plural or synonymic variant.
Most people search in plural format by default “bank accounts vs. bank account” for competitive 2 word key phrases and tend to use modifiers and / or alternate keyword synonyms. With this in mind, make sure you have a predefined destination page for each variation or create a page for multiple keywords by using the singular, plural and alternative keywords in the title or meta data. For example, a page about pricing could use keywords on the page about SEO rate, rates, fees, fee, costs, cost, SEO pricing, etc… If that does not work, then try utilizing conversion paths vs. traditional landing pages by offering a selection of 2-3 choice/selections to clarify consumer intent.
Example: I am here for (a) SEO Services (b) SEO Consulting or (c) Free Themes and Downloads, then based on which option they click, tailor your message to get to the next layer of engagement. By segmenting conversion paths
instead of pages is an effective way to deliver a targeted message to the right visitors at the right time. - Structure your website to facilitate rankings – Creating a tiered structure of relevance from the onset and matching your keywords to pages created specifically for those keywords is a must. You can theme and silo (use a series of topical categories) for your website or use flat site architecture and keep all of the naming conventions relevant that incorporate exact match keywords. The idea is to use unified titles, url structure, h1 tags, meta data and internal and external links to define each page with SEO.
- Employ Staggered Link Diversity – Different links work better for different stages of your website’s development. For example, to warm things up, Yahoo Directory, Business.com, Best of the Web and other trusted directories work wonders to escalate trust (here is a great list from SEOCompany.Ca
). After adding the base layer of links, invest time and energy looking for niche related links from notable aged sites in addition to fresh editorial links from news, press releases, blogs and social media to balance the mix. It’s better to get deep links to specific pages with specific anchor text (5-15 links per page) rather than just acquiring random links to the homepage. No one said building links is easy, but it is a mandatory step to distinguish your pages in search engines (and increase your potential exposure for readers). - Add Fresh Content Regularly – Industries are competitive, which means you need to offer something worthwhile to search engine spiders and human visitors alike to encourage them to consider your website as an authority on a subject. The ultimate objective of SEO is to develop authority; from there rankings are produced from the on page and off page synergy of trust, citation and the coherence and / or synergy of the collective content within your website.
- Pay Attention to the Long-Tail – Long tail keywords (keyword incorporating 3 or more words and or modifiers) are responsible for 80% of the traffic to most websites.
Rarely do websites start from zero then jump to the top for competitive keywords. First they show signs of traction with one or more keywords then that phenomenon continues to stem as additional keywords cross the tipping point and become buoyant.
The key is to use analytics, referral data to study where that traction occurs, then intersect the intent of those keywords with additional pages within your website that have a related theme. If you pick up on a keyword “breaking lose” then feed it with additional editorial pages using similar titles and / or internal links to polish the ranking factor to create more traction through keyword stemming. To summarize:
1) define your site in advance, top level keywords, categories, landing pages and on page copy for conversion, 2) add another layer with a blog or CMS (content management system) to add topical content to support your cause, 3) track your results with analytics to gauge the effectiveness of a campaign, 4) build a base level of aged links and then 5) use deep links via editorial linking from articles, blogs & social media while 6) targeting long-tail traffic until your site can devour more market share as a result of age, trust and authority.
How to Write META Tags Properly
META tags are incorporated into the HTML code of many webpages. The most common META tags are TITLE, DESCRIPTION, and KEYWORDS. They affect not only how a site appears in search listings, but how high or low a position it receives in results. Read on to learn how to write META tags properly and effectively…TITLE TAG
Perhaps the most important META tag, the TITLE tag determines the clickable title of a search result, as well as the text which appears on the title bar of a web browser. Here are some tips on how to properly write this tag:
- Use fewer than sixty five characters; otherwise, part of the title will be cut off by browsers and search engines.
- Every page on the website needs to have a unique title.
- Your primary keyword target should be at the beginning of the TITLE tag.
- Place your company name at the end of the TITLE tag.
The 2nd most important META tag, DESCRIPTION determines what text appears below the title in search results (with some exceptions). People who visit a webpage will not see this tag, unless they look at the source code. Tips on how to use it properly:
- Keep the description approximately 125-175 characters.
- Don’t put specific data searchers are looking for in the description tag; they might only read it and not visit the site.
- Use the description to market to the user and increase the click through to the website.
- The description is not a ranking factor, but be sure to use your target keyword(s) and keyword phrases so that they will be bold in the search results.
A less important META tag is KEYWORDS as many search engines do not use them as a ranking factor. The META KEYWORD TAG contains one or more search keywords that relate to the web page in question. Here are a few tips:
- Avoid using more than fifteen keywords, and don’t write any word more than once.
- Use words which aren’t in the TITLE or DESCRIPTION tags but that are in the copy of the page.
- Avoid words that aren’t relevant to the page’s subject. In fact, using keywords not relevant or included in your page can lead to ranking penalties.
- To properly separate multiple keywords, use commas.
Some lesser-known META tags are not used by most search engines and browsers, making them minimally useful. However, one other fairly important META tag is ROBOTS. It gives specific instructions to search engine “robots” or “spiders”; automated computer programs which visit and index websites, recording information that will appear in search results.
You may not need to know HTML to write META tags properly. Programs like Frontpage and Dreamweaver allow users to set the META tags for a webpage design automatically. For example, the function for setting META tags in Frontpage is located in “Page properties”, under the “Custom” tab. The TITLE is set under the “General” tab
