SEO- 9 Ridiculously Easy Steps to the Top 10

Search Engine Optimization companies are making a fortune by doing the menial work that is overlooked by many designers. It is ridiculously easy to do most of the work done by most SEO companies, all you have to do is create good habits.

There are 9 main points you should focus on:

• Keywords
• URL Text
• Description, Meta tags
• Title tags
• Image Names
• ALT tags
• Heading tags
• Content
• Hyperlinks

The focus of these 8 steps is to load your pages with as many “keywords” as possible.

Keywords
Keywords are the most important aspect of good SEO, this is where you tell the Search Engines what your site is about. Search Engines use an algorithm to determine the “Keyword Density” of your site, this formula is:

Total Words ÷ Keywords= Keyword Density

Use this formula on your competitors web site and see how they score, then aim to beat that score.

Choose keywords that best relate to the information, products or services that you are offering. For instance, if I am designing a site about “Web Design”, I want my site to include the words “Web Design” as many times as possible.

However, most people don’t just search for just one word, they type phrases, so you should consider the phrases that best suit your sites target market. For example, if I am creating a site about “Web Design” in New Orleans, I would include “New Orleans web design” in my keywords. Another way around this is to not separate my keywords with commas, just use spaces, and the Search Engines will make the phrases for you. The most important thing to remember is that the content of each page is different, so only use keywords pertaining to that page.

URL Text
When you name a new page you have the option to call it anything you could possibly think of, why not se a keyword? After all, the URL address is the first things a search engine comes across when indexing your pages. You have to remember content doesn’t come easy to everyone, so you gotta slip in your keywords when the process gives you an easy one.

Description Meta tags
These tags are dwindling in importance since Search Engines are now looking at content, but every little bit counts.

Optimize your meta tags to match your content, products, and services, and the Search Engines that still look at meta data will reward your efforts.

Title Tags
Title tags are the tags that tell the Search Engine the title, or formal description of the document or page. This is the word or phrase that is seen at the top of the browser window. The most important rule about title tags is, don’t put anything in the title tags but keywords. Once again this is an easy time to slip in your keywords, so don’t miss out.

Image Names
As I said before, content doesn’t come easy to everyone, so slip in your keywords whenever possible, this applies to image names. If you are saving a picture of a guy working on a computer for your web design web site, don’t call it “some_dude.jpg”, call it “web_site_design.jpg”. The Search engine will look at the code for the site and see the image pertains to the content of the site and this will be another relevant element on that particular page. You have to take the easy ones when you are given a chance.

ALT tags
Alt tags are keywords that you can attach to images, giving more weight to the image since Search Engines can’t analyze the content of the image itself. Here is a chance to slip in more keywords without writing great content, use it.

Heading tags
Heading tags are associated with the bold font that leads into a section of text. Like this:

Web Design
Web Design Inc. offers custom web site designs… 

Your heading tags should only be keywords, and should be presented in the order that your Meta tags follow. 

H1= first meta tag, H2= second meta tag… 

Try to utilize all 6 heading tags on each page to ensure maximum page optimization.

Content
As every expert will tell you, “Content is King.” Each web page should have at least 350 words on it, and the more the better, but keep in mind the formula for keyword density. You don’t want to fill a page with 1500 words of jibba-jabba and only 5 keywords in it. Some people get hung-up on how browsers display text, and use images with text in them because they want a cool font, but browsers can’t read the text embedded in images, so this content ads no weight to the page in a Search Engines eyes. 

Linkbaiting is the new trend among high ranking sites. Linkbaiting means writing quality content, or articles that other web sites can display on their pages as long as they give credit, and a link to your site. 

You don’t have to be a vi or emac expert to write good web content, just be thoughtful of how you word things and incorporate your keywords.

Hyperlinks
Hyperlinks are text links to other pages on your site. The rules of SEO and hyperlinks are easy:

• Use hyperlinks so the Search Engine will have a text link to follow to the next page
• Don’t use one word links, use long link phrases, preferably keyword phrases
• Use bullets, or some sort of small image that you can attach an ALT tag to, this will ad more importance to the link, and throw in a couple of free keywords for you.

Keep these 9 aspects in mid when designing a site, and you are sure to have a leg up on the competition.

Are People Buying?

How do you know your site is resonating with potential buyers. Are they clicking to your site from google adwords? Or finding you in organic rankings, and visiting your home page? The key question is, are they buying?  

No matter what your “product” is, the whole idea of getting traffic to your site, is for people to pull the trigger. To make the purchase, be it a product, or service.  It sounds obvious, and I know you’ve thought about it. But have you thought about it in the context of your web site?  Merely having a catalog, shopping cart, snappy graphics, and merchant account doesn’t automatically ring the register.

Create a product specific web site. Not a cataloged-base site. Pick your best (or only) product. Setup a site thats deep.  Show well-taken photos of your product. Get authoritative information about your product on the site. Add collateral information ( if you’re selling a diet product, offer dieting articles, dieting receipes etc).  Add testimonials.  Design for pay-for-click and organic listings (more on this to come).

Key Tip Here

Content is king.  To induce a visitor to buy, give them something to feel comfortable about your product.  Price it right, offer composite price (buy 2 get 3 free). Get your visitors buying!

More to come…

As long as I can remember, my dear friend, lets call her Sue, always knew that she would be financially alright. Even though her father, Phil, quite a wealthy man, consistently said his money would go to charity, or to his son.  He wasn’t happy with Sues’ lifestyle.  But Sue, deep down, knew her Dad would come through in the end. 

About 5 years ago, Sues Dad was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. He took the news quite well. You see, he was quite the vigorous guy.  His kids were grown and had their own families, he felt great, and announced he would fight it tooth and nail. He did.  Phil fought for a long time, seeing specialist after specialist, participating in drug study after study.  He wanted very much to enjoy life, and just deal with it. And he finally told his daughter that she would, in fact, get half of his assets. It was in his will.

After awhile, his symptoms got worse.  Sue and her brother decided to put him in a special care facility for people with Parkinson’s Disease. He flourished there. It was quite a beautiful place. Concierge service, activities, all kinds of fun things to do. Phil thoroughly enjoyed living there.  
Phil was an avid newspaper reader, reading the New York Times every morning, religiously, for years.  One morning, he fluffed open the paper, and saw the front page.  In big bold print, the story told of how Bernard Madoff stole 50 billion dollars from his investors in a long-running Ponzi scheme, and that all the money was lost. All 50 billion dollars was gone. Evaporated.
Phil dropped the newspaper, and let out a loud grown.  His money was gone. Madoff managed Phils portfolio valued at several million dollars. He always spoke of the genious Madoff to his son and daughter. But now, he just sat silent.  Sue heard the news, along with her brother, and rushed to the facility to see their Dad.

Realizing his money was gone, and in bad health, his will to live dwindled. He just gave up, Sue explained. “He was a broken man”.   Phil no longer read the newspaper every morning. He stopped speaking. He just sat in bed, with his head down. Sue moved him from the high-end facility that he so much enjoyed, to a nursing home. The money was gone. It wasn’t affordable.

Phil died not long after moving to the nursing home, a broken man.  Sue and her brother believe Madoff should be charged with murder.  And I wonder how many others have suffered this fate?  And where is Madoff? Living in a luxury penthouse, under house arrest. Still enjoying the highlife. 

Here’s the list of the biggest losers. There’s no mention of Phil. Only large corporations.

Part 2 of the web site checklist centers around Self-Hosting your web site.  Take a look at the check list and carefully consider each step. I’ll develop this into a parts list, as well as a task list in coming articles.

When I setup a web site, whether for business, or fun, keeping the budget low is key.  The checklist, the lead-off to self-hosting a web site article, gives you an idea of the things you’ll need to keep in mind to get your site going. 

Web Checklist – Self Hosting

0. Operating System - For client projects, I offer OS X (apple) or Linux.  In my view, if one wishes a stable, reliable web site, that stays up, and requires little operating system maintenance, choose OSX or Linux. 

1. Web Server hardware – start with an inexpensive computer – I generally buy a box from tigerdirect.com, or another low-priced seller. Keep the capital lay out low to start.


2. Web Server - Apache is the de facto standard in my view. It’s free, and quite powerful. And there are lots of tools, add-ons, and management software available.
For ease of configuration, and management, Apache GUI is a great tool.

3. Scripting Languages – PHP, Java, Javascript, ASP – my choice here is PHP, It’s free, very powerful, is object-oriented for real app building, and there are a lot of addons available.


4. Database – Mysql is everywhere. It’s free, easy to setup, easy to run, and the php library for mysql is very straightforward.


5. Web Site Design – Dreamweaver – lots of folks swear by hand-coding html. As a professional programmer with 20 years experience under my belt, using a tool like Dreamweaver reduces programming error, saves time (time=$$$), and its easy to use once you get the hang of it.


6. DNS Management (Domain Name Server) – this is always an issue if you have a dynamic IP – most do. Using a service like http://www.dyndns.com/ for your dynamic dns service works sometimes. I recommend getting a static ip address, it costs more, but its worth it. You want your site reliable. Contact your isp to get it setup.


7. Domain Name – I use cheap-domainregistration.com – It’s cheap. Bottom line.

8.  Co-Location Option – I’ve tried co-location many times. Have had mixed results. It’s costly, but frees you from dealing with all the issues of self-hosting.


9. ISP – get the company that offers the best deal for the fastest connection.

10. Server Backup / Power Backup - I usually have a 500GB or 1TB external backing up the server daily, with a battery backup unit on the server. I typically buy these items from costco.com.