Free Search Engine Optimization Tips

Find out where to get the best SEO information on the web.

The website achieved a #1 rank spot on Yahoo for the keyword search terms “Free Search Engine Optimization Tips” - see screen shot below:

A new page has been added to this blog and can be found here: Inbound Linking

Website content is one of the biggest factors in achieving good rankings in the search engines. A properly balanced content peppered with targeted keywords is key to obtaining great search engine rankings. Targeting your keywords throughout your content in a highly specific format is one of the elements needed for good optimization. The key here is a properly balanced keywords throughout the content with the proper keyword density. Keyword Density? It is the number of times that your keyword appears in relation to the total word count on your page. There are many great tools available for free that will let you know what your keyword density is. Now the proper amount of density is a debate that is not totally settled. From all the research that I have made into this area a good density seems to be around 7% -15% . Less than that and your content may not hold as much relevance in comparison to the keywords being searched on but a higher density than 15% and it may look like keyword spamming which will hurt your search engine rankings as well.

Some of the other factors to consider in creating your content is to use your specific keywords in the title of your article using the <H1> html tag around the title. The header tag element lets the search engines know that you are placing emphasis or importance on that portion of text so that is why it is important to use your keywords within that header tag.

Placing your keywords as close to the beginning of your article, such as your first paragraph, also holds importance and weight with the search engines and to your overall optimization strategy. Keeping you contaent article to around 500 words or less also helps, both with the search engines and the human reader element. Making your article to long will lose your readers interest (unless it is a very compelling article) as people tend to read at least 25% slower from a web page than printed text.

Building out your content to extend the number of pages overall in your website is the final goal that you should be targeting. Getting your keyword rich laser targeted content to 30 pages or more will give you a tremendous boost in your overall rankings.

I have achieved rankings within the top ten results of the 3 major search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN) using these techniques mentioned here in this blog. Try them for yourself and let me know what kind os improvements of success you are achieving.

Overall, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it come to achieving the search engine ranking results that you would desire. I’ll be posting more articles soon to help you in your pursuit of achieving your search engine optimization goals. Until ten, cheers!

Ahhh…to META or not to META that is the question? Or in the words of my friend from Italy, “Whats the META you?”

Ok, enough of the puns. Really, META tags are not what they used to be. Now that doesn’t mean that they are not important, but it means they don’t carry as much weight with the search engines as they used to. Again, on our scale of +3 to -3, META tags come in at a +1. So, a point is a point and in the search engine optimization game, it all adds up. Three out of four tags that that I review here all carry a +1, the last one (the dreaded <Refresh> tag) gets a -1.

Let take a look then at some of the META tags and what you can and can not do to optimize your web site. First one up, the <Description> tag. Use this tag to write a description of your site. Now even though Google really doesn’t factor in META tags anymore, MSN and Yahoo still use META tags extensively. The other advantage to the <Description> tag is that some search engines will use that content as a description of your site in the search results that are displayed to the end user. The other rule that you want to be aware of is to try and keep your description to a 150 characters or less. Two reasons for that: first, if your description has to many characters it will not be considered a “robot friendly” web page. The other reason is that anything over that 150 character limit may get truncated by the search engine and in that case it would not display in the search results.

One last point, you also would want to try and strategically pepper your description with your main keywords as well. Just remember to write your description for humans and not just for the search engines.

Next post - The <Keywords> META tag.

Keywords contained in your URL (Uniform Resource Locater) is also another item that carries a lot of weight with the Search Engines. On our sliding scale of +3 to -3, keywords in the URL come in at a strong +3. So that means if you can happen to get a domain name with your searched keywords, the better your ranking with the search engines and getting your web site optimized. Take for instance this domain name: http://www.freesearchengineoptimizationtips.com - it has all of the main keyword terms that will help whenever someone searches for any of the following keywords: search - engine - optimization - tips - free and that is not counting the keyword phrases that may be searched for as well.

Another factor of getting your keywords into your URL is by naming your sub files or pages with important keywords that you are trying to optimize for in the content for that particular page. For instance: http://www.freesearchengineoptimizationtips.com/urlkeywords.html where “urlkeywords” is the keyword phrase that you are attempting to rank well for. Now also keep in mind that you need to have the keywords in other parts of the document or just relying on them in your URL will not be effective. Having a URL that includes the keyword alone doesn’t help, but it helps when other sites link to you and lot of people link to others by their URL, thus the anchor text will use the keyword, and in the end that would help.

There are also some rumors that by having your keywords in your URL can also potentially help in your click through rate. My guess would be that the reason for that is that it makes the site look more relevant to your particular keyword search term.

Overall, just having a keyword rich domain name is not going to catapult you to the top ten, but in the big picture, it will help in branding your image and when combined with other SEO techniques, it does matter.

Title tags are extremely important when it comes to optimizing your site for the search engines and is an important factor in determining your ranking. Your page should have a TITLE tag and it should contain your search term(s). Inserting your keywords into this tag is what you are looking to achieve. The <title> tag is one of the most important places to have a keyword because what is placed inside the <title> tag shows in the search engine results as your page title. This is also what appears in the top left hand corner or your browser window, so having a descriptive, keyword rich title can go a long way in helping you with your SEO strategy.

Another rule to keep in mind is that your title tag should be short (usually 6 to 7 words at the most) and placing your keyword(s) near the beginning is the concept to use as you are designing your web site.  The recommended maximum number of characters within your title tag should not exceed 150. Anything over 150 characters in your title tag can render your page not “robot friendly”. It also carries a lot of weight in the overall scheme of things and on a scale of +3 to -3, title tags carry a +3. Need I say more