24
Mar

SEO Techniques Explained

Written by Simon Ward. Posted in SEO

In this article I will look at some of the basic techniques of SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

What Is SEO

SEO is a process of choosing the most appropriate targeted keyword phrases related to your site and ensuring that this ranks your site highly in search engines so that when someone searches for specific phrases it returns your site as high as possible. It basically involves fine tuning the content of your site along with the HTML and Meta tags. It also involves off site activities such as link building. The most popular search engines are Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, AOL and Ask Jeeves.

How do they decided what ranks well?

Search engines keep their methods and ranking algorithms secret, to get credit for finding the most valuable search-results and to deter spam pages from clogging those results. A search engine may use hundreds of factors while ranking the listings where the factors themselves and the weight each carries may change continually. Algorithms can differ so widely that a webpage that ranks #1 in a particular search engine could rank #200 in another search engine. New sites do not need to be “submitted” to search engines to be listed. A simple link from a well established site will get the search engines to visit the new site and begin to spider its contents. It can take a few days to even weeks from the referring of a link from such an established site for all the main search engine spiders to commence visiting and indexing the new site.

SEO Technique: Use Keywords In Page Titles

It is important to use keywords in page titles. Whatever text you place in the title tag (between the <title> and </title> portions) will appear in the title bar of browsers when they view the web page. Search engines also rank this as an important factor when deciding which terms your page should rank for, if any. It is also the title your page will be listed as in SERPS (Search Engine Result Pages), so it needs to appear attractive to humans also.

SEO Technique: Keyword Density

Keyword density is an indicator of the number of times the selected keyword appears in the web page. If you repeat your keywords with every other word on every line, then your site will probably be rejected as an artificial site or spam site. The accepted standard for a keyword density is between 3% and 5%, to get recognized by the search engines and you should never exceed it.

Simple steps to check the density:

  1. Copy and paste the content from an individual web page into a word-processing software program like Microsoft Word.
  2. Go to the ‘Edit’ menu and click ‘Select All’. Now go to the ‘Tools’ menu and select ‘Word Count’. Write down the total number of words in the page.
  3. Now select the ‘Find’ function on the ‘Edit’ menu. Go to the ‘Replace’ tab and type in the keyword you want to find. ‘Replace’ that word with the same word, so you don’t change the text.
  4. When you complete the replace function, the Word will provide a count of the words you replaced. That gives the number of times you have used the keyword in that page.
  5. Using the total word count for the page and the total number of keywords you can now calculate the keyword density.

Free Keyword Research tools

To decide what terms you should target you need a keyword tool to find out what terms are searched more regularly. Both of these tools are ideal for this job:

Other SEO Technique which I haven’t covered

Here are a few more SEO Techniques outlining the basic principles of SEO which I haven’t covered already:

  • Create a site with valuable content, products or services.
  • Place primary and secondary keywords within the first 25 words in your page content and spread them evenly throughout the document.
  • Use your keywords in the right fields and references within your web page. Like Title, META tags, Headers, etc.
  • Monitor your competitors and the top ranked websites to see what they are doing right in the way of design, navigation, content, keywords, etc. Also use Yahoo Site Explorer to find out where they are getting their links from, then get links from the same places.
  • Use reports and analytics to see where your traffic is coming from. Analyse your visitor location and their incoming sources whether from search engines or links from other sites and the keywords they used to find you.
  • Search google for terms like SEO Tips.

Test you site for broken Links

You can use this tool to check your site for broken links. It is worth removing or updating broken links.

www.pingable.org

Tags:

Trackback from your site.





Simon Ward

I created pingable back in 2007. Still loving blogging about Wordpress. Read more Connect with me via my Google Plus.

Comments (31)

  • March 26, 2008 at 11:04 pm |

    The most important part of SEO is the keyword phrase that you use for the anchor text of your inbound links. If you target long tail keyword phrases with little competition you can achieve top rankings relatively easily.

  • March 30, 2008 at 9:54 pm |

    Don’t worry about word and all that to find out your keyword density, there are lots of things out there that let you do it easier.
    One, for example, is SEOMoz’s term targeting tool: http://www.seomoz.org/term-target

  • March 30, 2008 at 10:07 pm |

    SEOmoz is good, although you do have to sign up!

  • April 4, 2008 at 9:56 am |

    Thanks for posting that! I’m still learning and that was really informational and helpful for me!

  • April 9, 2008 at 9:24 am |

    I´m into blogging, and the SEO is done for me automatically (wordpress plugin).Blogs get indexed by search engines faster than normal websites, especially if you update your blog regularly with fresh content and tag your content properly.

  • May 16, 2008 at 5:00 am |

    You can always use Iwebtool http://www.iwebtool.com/keyword_density to find your keyword density, and best of all, you don’t have to sign up.

  • May 25, 2008 at 11:23 am |

    I am wondering where PR Green Bar stands in that race? I have seen people mad about link building to get high PR, should we count that in all SEO strategies?

  • May 26, 2008 at 2:29 pm |

    I would agree with your comments about title, meta description etc etc…but you haven’t mentioned one thing that I personally find very helpful to my projects – choice of domain name!

    It is not the be all and end all, but if you register a URL with your most important keyword(s) in, I have found consistently it gives you a head start, and I have tried various TLD extentions. Coupled with your advice above, it all works well ;)

    @Qaswer – PR is largely dead isn’t it? I have several sites doing organically well with less PR than competitors. Can’t say I worry about it anyway, personally. Link quality is more mportant than sheer quantity. Unless you want to rank in Live, that is…
    ;)

  • June 8, 2008 at 4:55 pm |

    SEO is a very complex thing…an all of the 1000 thing that are involved in it are important. The most Important thing is to be patient and to understand the “puls” of the internet!

  • June 17, 2008 at 4:53 pm |

    Having your keywords in the SEO and your link WILL definetly get you higher page ranking!

  • June 22, 2008 at 12:29 am |

    When did AOL become a search engine? Don’t they rely on Google?

  • June 22, 2008 at 12:33 am |

    Yes AOL uses Google for search…however, for the point of the article AOL is a popular search portal…albeit one that uses google.

  • June 30, 2008 at 7:50 am |

    Someone in comments said, “SEO is very complex thing”. I am not agreed with that. Following some simple techniques and to be very genuine it is not difficult. My many sites hold #1 on Google for many highly competitive keywords and i did nothing special with that. Just let your blog, site, or forum in a natural way.

  • June 30, 2008 at 5:08 pm |

    Hi, Ref: Safety Protection Technology’s comment – I wholy agree with you. “SEO” Search Engine Optimisation is not rocket science if the available SEO help and tools online are utilised. I provide SEO in Chester, Cheshire UK – Google “webmaster tools” and their “webmaster guidelines” are great to help make SEO simple to understand for anyone :)
    My SEO results include my website ranking top ten for relevant search terms with 50million+ results and I would be the first to say I have a LOT to learn about SEO Search Engine Optimisation.
    In SEO every day is a school day ;)
    SEO Chester, Cheshire UK SEO UK.

  • Allan from ViSwiss
    July 29, 2008 at 5:29 am |

    For your readers that use Firefox, I highly recommend the SEO Quake extension. It provides a tool bar that indicates keyword density, incomming and outging links, PR, Alexa etc. You can also enable it on Google search results to see at a glance what those stats are for pages that are ranking ahead of you. Just my 2 cents.

  • August 7, 2008 at 5:34 pm |

    Thank you for nice sharing. It’s true that SEO is complicated but this article helps me to get some idea.

  • Alex from Jewellery
    August 9, 2008 at 5:09 am |

    @Simon on March 30th, 2008 10:07 pm

    I have tried seomoz for more than a month now it is good but i used softwareprojects few days back and i think it gives more precise information in one page and saves time if you use it on a daily basis.

  • August 29, 2008 at 1:36 pm |

    I think finding right keyword is the most crucial stage of SEO…apart from tedious link building.

    One other thing may be including keywords on the first paragraph within 20 words. It weighs more than adding later into paragraphs plus bold and italic adds value.

  • September 11, 2008 at 7:11 am |

    That was a good read, i must say that your grasp on the topic is pretty strong.

    I liked the points about keyword density. Cheers!

  • September 19, 2008 at 2:14 am |

    I never really paid attention to the key words in the title and your post has come as a whack on the head.

    Thanks for the two tools that you have mentioned, I think that this has been a good value for time for me.

  • October 5, 2008 at 11:09 pm |

    thanks for posting it

    i am learning it..

  • November 17, 2008 at 1:53 am |

    Very useful information about SEO, this has been of great help to me in optimising my website. thanks a lot.

  • February 17, 2009 at 11:26 am |

    Always nice to get updated. Great and informative article on SEO.

  • March 1, 2009 at 8:23 am |

    19. Take advantage of local search opportunities. Online research for offline buying is a growing trend. Optimize your site to catch local traffic by showing your address and local phone number prominently. Write a detailed Directions/Location page using neighborhoods and landmarks in the page text. Submit your site to the free local listings services that the major search engines offer. Make sure your site is listed in local/social directories such as CitySearch, Yelp, Local.com, etc., and encourage customers to leave reviews of your business on these sites, too.

  • Robert from Free SEO Ebooks
    May 17, 2009 at 11:08 am |

    If you want to check your keyword density try with analyzer provided by submitexpress.com. Just put the link of your home page or inner page in that query, and you will get a complete analyze of your page. submitexpress(dot)com/analyzer

  • Zatch from Chicago Printing
    February 28, 2010 at 5:57 pm |

    It was always a question to me. what is keyword density? Thanks to this post my question has finally got an answer. I know now what it is, how to do it, and many keywords I should use.

    Thanks,
    Zatch

  • August 11, 2011 at 4:50 am |

    I also would like to add to get yourself updated. Nowadays, Google keeps on updating their algorithm. The recent update was the Google panda update and now, they have updated their Google page rank. Just sharing. Cheers!

  • December 10, 2011 at 8:34 am |

    While doing SEO keyword research is the most important task to consider and proper keyword should be targeted. Also broken links

  • Jennifer from Miami homes
    March 3, 2012 at 10:33 pm |

    I only use Google Keyword tools. Another tip I can give, always follow top ranking sites and get their averages especially if you are starting to do SEO. Do not try any shortcut on your SEO tasks.

Leave a comment

This site uses KeywordLuv. Enter YourName@YourKeywords in the Name field to take advantage.

Win an Elegant Themes membership

Pingable Facebook

Pingable Archive