In Search of Optimization

Ahhh, finally! The last step in our “How to SEO in 10 Steps” series. For the sake of those who haven’t read through all the previous posts, here they are - from Step 1 to Step 9:

1. How to SEO in 10 Steps - Know your Keywords
2. How to SEO in 10 Steps - Keyword Research
3. How to SEO in 10 Steps - Knowing your Competition
4. How to SEO in 10 Steps - Keyword Placement
5. How to SEO in 10 Steps - Gaining Popularity
6. How to SEO in 10 Steps - Self Promotion
7. How to SEO in 10 Steps - The Art of Google Bombing
8. How to SEO in 10 Steps - Localizing
9. How to SEO in 10 Steps - Be Human

Now, onto our final step - Review, Tweak, Review.

As a student, I always remember my teachers and parents telling me to review my work before submitting them and though I am a bit annoyed by the fact that I have to go through my work from beginning to end just to make sure that all is well, I still do it and for one reason - I want everything to be as best as they can be. When I was in third grade, a little laziness on my end resulted to my final exams score in Math being 10 points lower than the ‘other’ student and my mistakes were pretty stupid. I knew I would have corrected them if only I reviewed my work before submitting them.

The same goes with Search Engine Optimization and online marketing in general. After you’ve gone through all your optimization methods, always be sure to review your work, tweak it a bit if needed, review again, then tweak again, then review again until you feel that it’s perfect. Ask yourself questions like, “Which is better? San Diego search engine optimization or San Diego SEO?” Always do your homework and always be a diligent researcher. The more you know, the better you become.

Go through your work and check if your spellings are right. Read your entire website and see if it’s readable to humans. Consult other people who know SEO and online marketing and ask them for their comments. Always accept criticisms positively - consider them as your stepping stones to having a better more optimized website.

Lastly, ask yourself, have I done well enough? If you’re answer is yes and if you feel confident enough, then go ahead, give it a shot, and enjoy!

Before I end this series, I would like to let you know that I’m in no way saying that my methods are better than the rest or that these steps are more complete than the others. All that I’ve shared to you is all that I’ve learned thus far. They work for me and they might just work for you. I will be glad if you’ll bookmark this page or if you’ll leave a comment below to let me know what you think about it. Of course, I’ll also be happy if you tell your friends about this series or if you bookmark it in del.icio.us or digg it.

Thanks to all of you who’ve read through everything that I’ve said. I hope I didn’t bore you, made you sleep for days, or gave you headaches.

Keep coming back.

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Are you human? Again, I ask you, ARE YOU HUMAN?

The problem with many technically oriented people such as internet marketers, programmers, and the like is that they tend to think more like machines than human. Chat with an SEO expert about how to get top rankings in Google and the conversation quickly moves to bots, sitemaps, and algorithms. Before you write me that hate mail, I want to tell you that there’s nothing wrong with that as sufficient technical knowledge is required in order to get a good ranking with the search engines. However, the point is almost always forgotten by many and that is, we’re creating websites for people and we’re selling our products to people. The only difference between offline and online marketing is the medium that is used. The rest almost always stays the same.

This is the main reason why lots of wannabes search the internet for ways to cheat the search engines - either through doorway pages, user agent checking, ip checking, etc. They’ve basically missed the point since the whole story of making your websites searchable in the search engines is that you want PEOPLE to see and read through your website and hopefully you could make a sale.

It doesn’t really matter if your website is one of the La Jolla restaurants or just a simple blog containing all your ramblings about your mother-in-law, school or whatever - in the end, you still want human beings to read your website.

So, how can we be human? Simple, write naturally and design your websites for humans. However, I would also put importance in staying conscious about the search engines when you write since it is them who would actually make your website searchable to humans. In other words, write for the people but also keep the search engines in mind. In fact, if you write good enough, the search engines won’t really matter to you since if people like you and your website then will link to you anyway. Another bonus for writing as human as possible is that search terms are naturally incorporated into your website in a manner that search engines want and in a manner that people are searching for.

Now, I ask you again, are you human?

Now for our last step - Review, tweak, review

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The world is a very huge place to live in and there are billions of people living in it. The same goes with the internet. It’s a very powerful medium with billions of people accessing it everyday from different countries all over the world. This is both a good thing and a bad thing to the online marketer.

It’s good because we have lots and lots and lots of people to tell about our product. It’s bad because there are also lots and lots and lots of other marketers who might be competing in the same arena as we do. This is where localizing your efforts come into play.

But Mr. Mike Lopez (that’s me), what are you talking about? Localizing is as simple as adding your specific location to your targeted search term.

Let’s say you have a website about used cars and you want to make money out of it. Great, all you have to do is optimize your website for the search term ‘used cars’ as well as other related terms — or should you? A quick search at Google for used cars shows me 70 million websites competing for the term. Ouch! That’s too much to handle so let’s make it easier.

Let’s say you are a San Diego based used cars dealer and you have a website about it. Instead of optimizing for used cars, you may want to optimize for San Diego used cars instead. Now, searching Google for San Diego used cars reveals a manageable 2 million competing websites. Notice that this method hits 2 birds with just one stone. First, you have fewer competing websites which means easier SEO work for you. Second, you get targeted visitors who are way more interested in getting used cars in San Diego since they searched for it in the first place.

I don’t think I need to explain this further. The point is obvious and simple - just add your location to your SEO efforts and things become easier.

Our next step - Be Human.

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We’re four steps away to completing this 10-step short course on how to do Search Engine Optimization and I’m very thankful if you have been reading through my posts thus far. You can read the previous 6 steps here:

1. How to SEO in 10 Steps - Know your Keywords
2. How to SEO in 10 Steps - Keyword Research
3. How to SEO in 10 Steps - Knowing your Competition
4. How to SEO in 10 Steps - Keyword Placement
5. How to SEO in 10 Steps - Gaining Popularity
6. How to SEO in 10 Steps - Self Promotion

In this lesson, we will be discussing about the art of Google bombing. Google what? Though it sounds like blackhat, IMO, it really isn’t.

An excerpt from Wikipedia explains why Google bombing works:

Because of the way that Google’s algorithm works, a page will be ranked higher if the sites that link to that page use consistent anchor text. A Google bomb is created if a large number of sites link to the page in this manner.

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bombing

So, how do we use this technique to your benefit? If you’ve been consciously reading this lesson, then you might have already seen the very obvious answer and that is to get more inbound links with the anchor text that you want. I believe this is better explained through an example.

Assuming you have a website about prom dresses and you want to rank high for the keyphrase ‘cheap prom dresses‘, then you would want other websites to link to your website using that keyphrase. Speaking HTML, their link to your website would look like this:

<a href=”http://www.talkpromdresses.com/”>cheap prom dresses</a>

The whole idea is based upon the fact that if Google sees more websites linking to you in this way, then it will think that your website is indeed about ‘cheap prom dresses’ and thus give you a higher ranking for that search term.

One funny thing about this method is that Google may give you a #1 spot of a particular search term if you get enough inbound links with a particular search term as an anchor text even if you don’t actually have that search term in your website. In other words, if enough websites link to your website with the anchor text ’son of the devil’, then Google might just show your website in the #1 spot for that keyphrase even if your website doesn’t say anything about the son of the devil.

Now that you’ve learned this, I suggest that you start exchanging links with other websites using descriptive and competitive search terms as anchor text.

Next, we’ll talk about Localizing.

Click HERE for Search Engine Optimization Books and Guides.

The internet is a very large place and unless you know how to make yourself known to the vast population of the web, then chances are you’ll never get noticed by anyone at all. In this lesson, we will be discussing about self-promotion. I understand that this may sound too egoistic to some of you but I must remind you that we’re discussing SEO as well as marketing in general and whenever marketing is involved, promotion is also involved.

How to promote yourself in the internet…

What’s your name? As for me, my name is Mike Lopez and if you do a search in Google, Yahoo, and MSN Live (at the time of this writing), then you would see my blog (www.mikelopez.info) in the #1 position. So, what’s the big deal? Simple, the more trusted you appear, the more people will trust you. The more trusted you are, the more sales you make. So if you’re name is Neil Crespi, then you would want people to see a good image whenever they do a search about you on the internet.

Here’s a quick checklist on how to promote yourself in the internet.

1. Write a personal blog about yourself and discuss your expertise in it. Make sure that you look ‘human’ in your personal blog and not just someone who wants to sell a product.
2. Participate in email groups (Yahoo Groups, Google Groups, etc) related to your target market and reply intelligently to questions. Don’t just reply with ‘I know the answer to your question, visit this website….’ as people will quickly label you as a spammer.
3. Participate in forums related to your target market. Rules that apply to email groups also apply here.
4. Join social networking websites such as Friendster, Tagged, etc. and make friends with people and when I say make friends, make real friends and not just ‘contacts’.
5. Back to your personal blog, create posts that link to your forum posts, friendster / tagged profile, and other activities you are doing. The more people perceive you as involved in your niche, then more they will trust you.

There are many more ways to promote yourself such as including your blog address in your business cards or even making stickers about it. Just be creative and always remember that the whole goal is to start treating yourself as an expert so people will also treat you as one.

Step 7 of our series will be about The Art of Google Bombing.

Click HERE for Search Engine Optimization Books and Guides.

In the beginning, search engines were dumb directories that simply listed websites that were submitted to them. However, search engines became smarter and started creating spiders that crawl the world wide web looking for websites to include in their database. Eventually, these search engines realized that some websites have more inbound links compared to other websites. The ‘gods’ running the search engines thought, if more websites link to website “A” than website “B”, then website “A” has to be more popular than website “B” - thus began the idea of link popularity.

On the other hand, the lowly humans of the WWW quickly came up with link farms in an attempt to make the search engine gods think that their websites are more popular than others. It worked at first but the gods were smarter and devised algorithms to defeat the cheaters. The search engines started to check the context and the relevance of the interlinking websites…

The battle went on and is still ongoing at the time of this writing. But how do you gain popularity? A better question would be, what’s the right way to gain popularity?

The answer goes back to the basics of popularity itself. A person who does better on a particular thing is more likely to be more popular than his competitors. The more popular a person is, the more referrals he gets. The same goes for websites. The best way to gain popularity in the vast world of the web is to do well in your field of expertise and to start to make yourself an expert in your field. The more people perceive you as an expert, the more referrals you get and in the internet, referrals are most often made through links.

But how can I be an expert in my field?

If you have a website about Liposuction, then you want to write ORIGINAL articles about liposuction. I give stress to the word ORIGINAL because you will never be an expert if you just copy other people’s work. At first, you might just get a few visitors - perhaps friends and family, but as you continue to hone your skills and appear more like an expert to your readers, you will start seeing other websites linking to you. Sooner or later, you will see more websites linking to you simply because you’re a source of good information. The more websites linking to you, the more the search engines will see you as popular. The more popular you appear to the search engines, the higher your rank becomes.
Note that we’re only scratching the surface of this topic. There are plenty of ways to gain popularity on the web and we will be dedicating the rest of this series on how to gain link popularity on the web.

Next in Line, Step 6 - Self Promotion.

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Now that you’re armed with information about your competitors, you can now start to actually optimize your website. This in fact is the simplest thing of all to do but it does require proper care or the search engines might just hate you.What you would basically want to do is to copy the way the top ranking website was optimized and add a bit more. If for example you’re optimizing for the keyphrase hair restoration in New Jersey, then you want these keyphrase to appear in important sections of your website.
These important positions are:

1. Title Tag
2. Header Tags - H1, H2, H3
3. Content body
4. Footer (end of website)
5. Image alt attribute
6. Href title attribute

Be creative in making use of these tags but always remember that your primary audience are actual human beings. What’s the use of ranking high in the search engines and getting tons of traffic if people can’t actually understand what the heck your website is all about. The usual and most acceptable formula is to include your keyphrase once in your title tag, once in one or two of the header tags, the first sentence of the first paragraph of your content body, once in the footer and at least in one of the image’s alt attribute.

That’s all I can tell you about this step since it involves actual writing and I can’t really tell you how to write good content. Also, always remember to write original content. Don’t just copy other people’s website.
TIP: Take a look at how your competitor’s websites are written and try to do better or at least mimic them.

Onto Step 5 - Gaining Popularity.

Click HERE for Search Engine Optimization Books and Guides.

Know your competition is one of the wisdoms that my grandfather taught me when I was young. He was an airforce pilot. He would always say, “Mike, know your competition. Keep your friends close but keep your enemies closer.” What he said is true. In order to succeed in any battle, it is imperative that one should know everything about his competition.

This remains true in the world of SEO. Now that you already know what keywords you want and what the people are searching, then it’s time for you to know who your competitors are and what best place to learn about them than the search engines themselves. To simplify things, we would only be taking a look at Google but it’s basically the same for all the other search engines.

Let’s say your target keyword is cosmetic surgeons. What you would want to do is to go to www.google.com and type cosmetic surgeons. Google will then give you enough information to know your competition.

The first information I want you take a look at is the number of websites Google found for that cosmetic surgeons. This can be found near the upper right portion of the page. Here’s a screenshot:

This shows that Google found 20,800,000 websites for the keywords cosmetic surgeon. 20,800,000 is pretty tough. Usually, you would want a keyphrase with fewer competing webpages than this but for example’s sake, we’ll stick with this keyphrase for the meantime.

Now, you want to know the first 10 websites that Google returned. To do this, all you need to do is type the URLs of the first 10 websites that Google listed for cosmetic surgeons in a spreadsheet (Excel or OpenOffice Calc). Name this column “URL”.
Next step is to find out how many other websites are linking to each of the top 10 websites. To do this, all you need to do is type link:http://competitor-url in Google’s search bar. Google will now return all the websites that link to your competitor’s URL.

Again, near the upper right corner of the page, Google will show how many websites link to our competitor’s website. In the above screenshot, we see that www.cosmeticsurgery.org has 140 websites linking to it. You now add this info next to the URL in your spreadsheet file. Name this column “Links”.
Typically, you would want to get more links than your competitor.

Last thing you need to do is to actually visit your competitor’s website, view the webpage’s source code and take note of the following:

1. Are the keyphrases included in the webpage’s title?
2. How many times are the keyphrases mentioned in the actual body of their webpage?
3. How many times are the keyphrases included in header tags - H1, H2, H3?

Note that I am assuming that you know HTML. If you don’t then you may want to ask someone who knows HTML for help to determine the three items mentioned above.

You now add this info to your spreadsheet so that you will now have the following info:

Now, we have competitor data, it’s time to take action in Step 4 - Keyword Placement.

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Keyword research is the art of knowing what people are actually searching for but how on earth would we know what they’re searching for? One thing you can do is to go and interview every person in the world about their searching habits but I don’t think that’s a good idea. Another thing you can do is to use the tools made available to us online that shows us enough information to know what people are searching for.

One of these tools is Overture’s Keyword Inventory tool which can be found at http://inventory.overture.com/.

Let’s assume that you’re creating a website for a San Jose based Rhinoplasty company. What you would want to know is find out how many people are searching for the keyword rhinoplasty so you go to http://inventory.overture.com/ and type in rhinoplasty. With a click of a button, you will be shown how many searches were made last month for rhinoplasty and in the screenshot below taken at the time of this writing, it shows that rhinoplasty was searched 11460 times for the previous month.

Even better, Overture also comes up with a list of related keyphrases. I took a screenshot of this list and from it we can see that San Jose rhinoplasty was searched 83 times last month.

Though that doesn’t sound too much, we at least know how many times it was searched. Besides, someone searching for san jose rhinoplasty has to be really interested in looking for a rhinoplasty clinic in San Jose and that sounds like 95% client.

Tip: Based on this research data, you may also decide what other keywords you may want to include in your website.

Ok, that concludes Step 2 of our series… Now onto step 3 - Knowing your Competition

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Search engine optimization or SEO has been the buzz-word among web developers for the past few years and it deserves to be so. How you optimize your website for the search engines directly relates to how much traffic you will get and if you’re trying to make money out of your website, then more traffic means more money as well.

The bad thing is that I’ve seen many websites that are not optimized for the search engines in any way. Worst, the designers / developers of this websites think that they will magically appear in the search engines after they uploaded their website. On the good side, SEO is not that difficult at all. In fact, search engine optimization is so easy that it becomes second nature to a web developer / designer in a very short amount of time.

In this 10-part series, we will be focusing more on keywords and website popularity since SEO mostly revolves on that but before we continue, here’s a short and basic list of DON’Ts for you to follow:

1. Do not use frames
2. Do not use iframes
3. Do not use hidden text
4. Do not spam the forums
5. Do not cheat the search engines in any way imaginable

Remember, there is no easy way to get the #1 spot on the search engines for your targetted keyword but it’s not that difficult either. It’s all a matter of doing the right thing and that’s what we are going to discuss.

The Keywords

Put simply, keywords are the words that people type in a search engine’s search box in order for them to find a particular website that satisfies what they are looking for. Here’s how it works… When a person types a word or a set of words in a search engine, the search engine would automatically search it’s database for relevant websites that match the keyword/s being searched. Each search engine has its own algorithm that basically adds ’scores’ to a website based on the keywords being searched. It then sorts the websites based on their scores and shows the results to the person doing the searching.

If all of that sounds like rocket science to you, don’t worry. You actually don’t need to know all of that to get a good position in the search engine. What you need to know are what the search engines want and good thing, they are pretty transparent in divulging some of their secrets.

Ok, enough of the intro. Let’s move on to Step 1…

STEP 1: Know your Keywords
You need to have a goal and for the sake of SEO, your goal is to rank well for a particular keyword. Let’s say you’re name is George Lindemann and you are advocating for something called “People For the American Way” also known as PFAW. With this in mind, you may want to rank well for the keyphrase George Lindemann pfaw. You may also want to optimize for George Lindemann People For the American Way as your secondary keyphrase.

Now that you know what you want, you may now start to actually optimize your website. This brings us to Step 2 - Keyword Research.

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