SEO Tools, Methods and Techniques

The place to start when it comes to understanding professional SEO practices is Google's Webmaster Guidelines for what makes a good, indexable website.

Beyond Google’s guidelines, professional SEO practices should be based on research-based knowledge and previous successes. Make sure to ask questions to ensure your SEO expert is truly knowledgable and follows ethical seo practices.

For the most part professional SEO practices are not mentioned specifically in Google’s guidelines. There are four primary reasons for this with the last three being related to the first.

1. Google is typically secretive about exactly how it ranks websites and so does not provide details about advanced SEO tactics, but only general guidelines for success and specific rules for what is not allowed.

2. Because of the lack of clear guidelines, many companies and organizations do not effectively implement SEO practices because they do not know how and/or have not budgeted for expert advice.

3. It is fairly well known that Google regularly changes its algorithms for ranking websites – as often as quarterly. This can make expending resources on SEO a difficult choice for many organizations because the same SEO project that is a success in one quarter may potentially become a failure in the next without the reasons for either success or failure being well understood.

4. A minority of less-ethical providers in the SEO industry focus on finding shortcuts to gaining rank in Google search results without doing the hard work of providing genuine, practical content that people value and recommend to others.

When discovered, Google punishes the websites and companies that use these unethical practices by delisting them and often publicly denouncing them. The most famous example to date was probably the delisting of BMW's German website due to deceptive SEO practices.

The result is that many organizations are overly cautious of SEO for fear of being delisted and/or being associated with any negative public attention.

Despite the general lack of understanding of how to be successful with ethical SEO and the challenges of working without specific guidelines from Google, the fact remains that successful, ethical SEO that achieves high rankings in Google is not only possible, but actually highly probable if professional practices are followed.

It is definitely the case that the most important elements of SEO are: First, how you use the keywords that you have determined thru research are the most popular and relevant for your products and services, followed by... Second, how popular your site is in terms of inbound links from relevant websites and the importance of those sites.

So what else is important?

Here a quick overview of some critical items that should be included on any SEO-optimized website, but which are not specifically keyword or link popularity related.

Each subsection will state Google’s specific guidelines and then provide some additional detail on how to make your site SEO-friendly in practice – since, as mentioned in other blog entries, Google does not provide much of this detail itself.

HINT: What is available can be found at: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769.

For the sake of economy, the diverse reasons that follow in this article as to why these specific non-keyword, non-link-popularity SEO recommendations are helpful and do work are only elaborated briefly.

In summary, Google writes its search engine algorithms and programs its search engine spiders to approximate the human understanding of practical, relevant, easy-to-access, and valuable as closely as possible.

With this in mind, the recommendations listed below are based on a professional SEO-consultant understanding of some of the ways in which Google goes about doing this.

1. Website Architecture

Google states in its guidelines that you should:

“Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link."

Here are some details regarding the most important ways to follow this guideline and be effective for SEO.

 1.a. Navigation

 • Create a clear and limited set of top-level, primary navigation choices – typically 5-7 at most and have the actual navigation links in text.

 • Think of your primary navigation choices – typically those aligned horizontally near the top of the page – as options that set up channels of related information. I.e. if it’s related it is contained within the channel, if it’s not, it isn’t or at least not at length.

 • Secondary navigation, if there is enough content to warrant it, should relate to the information within the specific active top-level channel. Likewise, it should be limited to 5-7 choices at most and be kept to the left or in some cases to the right of the page and be noticeably different from the primary navigation – one case where more than 5-7 sub-nav choices in OK is with a list of Blog entries, which is acceptable to be quite lengthy and have many articles list in the style of a sub-nav.

 1.b. Static Text Links

 • The easiest way to include static text links from one page to another and ensure they are included on all pages is to make your primary and secondary navigation choices static text links themselves.

 In this context, ‘static’ means HTML code that search engine spiders can interpret, rather than JavaScript,  Ajax, or the like.

 • Beyond text links for navigation, it is also beneficial to include occasional links from within the body text of a page when referring to topics contained in other top-level channels.
 

2. Orientation Tools & Resources

Here are a few additional pointers to make your website search engine friendly and which are not directly related to keyword usage or link popularity.

Google has the following to say about providing orientation tools and resources:
”Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages.”

 2.a. Site Map & Site Search

 Recall that Google writes its search engine ranking algorithms and programs its search engine spiders to approximate how people interpret the information on a website and what people might consider to be practical, relevant, easy-to-access, and valuable content.

 In this regard, Google is ever mindful that people are easily confused, often get lost, and always appreciate a map to help them find their way.

 Therefore, in the hypothetical situation that Google feels that two different website are otherwise of equal value, it will give the higher ranking to the website that contains a properly implemented site map.

 To get the most value and ensure the best potential of high ranking, a site map should be accurate, up to date, and provide enough detail for a person to figure out where to go next to find what they are looking for.

 Another way to add SEO friendliness to your website it to augment your sitemap with a site search tool. Many out-of-the-box site search tools are available. Indeed, the best third-party tool and most Google-friendly would be the one that you can licence from Google itself.

 2.b. What’s New

 As with site maps, Google gives preference to websites that include an up-to-date and detailed record of what has been added to the site since its inception or at least since the What’s New page was added.

 Again, in a hypothetical situation where Google considers two websites to be of equal value, it will give preference to the one that has a What’s New page or section.

 2.c. Contact Info Page

 In keeping with its ongoing and constantly advancing quest to index and rank websites that it thinks people will like (i.e. find valuable), Google understands that people like to be able to easily find contact information on a website, so they can call someone if they feel like it.

 Much as any organization may wish to limit the number of frivolous calls from the general public, it is important to put an email and phone number on your website, even if they simply lead people to an answering service or an automated email responder that directs them to additional information that they can find on the website.

 The most SEO-friendly way to implement this on a website is to have a dedicated Contact Info page.

 For the purposes of ranking for local search, it is also important to include a physical address on your contact page.

3. Footer & Tertiary Navigation

Another important place to insert contact information as well as any links to pages about legal details, privacy policies, terms and conditions, etc, is in the footer that appears on every page.

 NOTE: As with the Contact page, for the purposes of ranking for local search, it is also important to include your city/region info and a link to your contact info prominently on every page, typically in the footer.

 Placing this important but off-topic information in your footer accomplishes three things:

 • It enables visitors to get a quick snapshot of your contact details without visiting the Contact page.

 • It shows Google and human visitors that the website likely represents a genuine, legitimate organization that must take legal matters into consideration.

While there are many elements that go into effective search engine optimization, one that is critical for the others to succeed is effective keyword placement. It is essential to place the primary and secondary keywords you will be targeting into positions of prominence on your website. Specifically, your top three keywords should be placed as follows.

1. Into Your Site URL (Website Address)

If you are launching a new website, placing your top keyword into the site or root URL of your page can have an extraordinary positive impact for SEO. Likewise, if you have a long established website, but little or no ranking in search engines, it can be worthwhile to move your website to a new URL that includes your best keyword.

For large or complicated websites that might be difficult or too costly to move, the solution is to create a new microsite with good URL that promotes your most profitiable products and services and has links back to the old website as and when appropriate.

The reason for this is that your website address is the first thing that Google looks at and considers about your website. And, to Google’s way of thinking, which is to program its algorithms and search engine spiders to emulate what humans consider relevant and easy to understand, your overall website address is potentially the most important piece of information.

Why? Because if you include topical information in your URL, you make it unavoidably noticeable to visitors what your website is actually about. To Google, relevance is king, so in their review of your site seeing your topic area info in your URL is like see a large, easy-to-read business sign hanging over your front door.

The next question and the one that reveals why so few organizations do this, is: “But what about branding, ease of recall, and ease of typing in the URL? Won’t having a long URL with keywords in it cause problems?”

The answer is a simple redirect will let you enjoy the best of both worlds. In the case of Sparklift Internet Marketing, to get the best ease of use and branding as well as the highest SEO benefit from placing its top keyword in the URL, the web address that is included in promotional materials is www.sparklift.com; however, when you enter this URL, you are redirected to www.sparkliftinternetmarketing.com, which includes the top keyword ‘internet marketing’.

This is a legitimate use of a website redirect that Google does not consider spamdexing or the use of a black-hat doorway page or duplicate content, because www.sparklift.com does not include any content or collect any visitor information. It simply passes visitors along to the actual website address, which is the one that Google indexes and which appears in Google search results (see Fig. 1).

2. In Meta Titles

EXAMPLE: <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"><title>Home: Internet Marketing & Website Optimization Victoria BC - Internet Marketing & Search Engine Optimization Services</title>

Your top keyword, and preferably your top three keywords if possible, should be placed in the meta title of your top five to 10 most important pages -- these are the titles that appear in the colorbar at the top of every web browser window (see Fig. 2).

Fig. 2

NOTE: When searchers type simple terms into Google without additional instructions to the search engine, Google searches as follows: first, for pages that include the term exactly as typed; second, for pages that include both or all words the closer together and more prominent the better; then for pages that include any of the terms in positions from most to least prominent.

• As visitors move deeper into your site, you can begin to place your secondary and potentially your additional keywords into the meta titles as appropriate and relevant.

• Note that metatitles can only be 63 characters long with spaces. This one is 62.

3. In You Top-Level Headings

After your site URL and meta titles, the next most important position to place your keywords is in the HTML heading tags: <h1> and <h2>.

In terms of relevance, placing a keyword in a primary or secondary heading shows Google that you are continuing to pay attention to placing information in an easy-to-understand hierarchical order and that the content under the heading with the keyword is likely to be highly relevant to anyone searching on that term.

In terms of showing Google that you have the perfect storm of information about a given keyword topic, having your top keywords strategically placed in the URL, the meta titles, and frequently in <h1> and <h2> tags of your website provides a very strong start.

4. Other Prominent Positions

In combination with the prominent positions listed previously, using the following other prominent placements for keywords will show Google that your site has a deep level of relevance.

These other prominent positions for keyword placement are: additional heading levels such as <h3> and <h4>; linked text; bolded and colored text; and, bulleted and numbered lists.

5. Body Text

It is very important to recall throughout your SEO implementation that in addition to placing the keywords prominently, they must also actually be used in the body content on your site in the context of providing valuable information to real people.

Google has developed highly advanced algorithms that analyze the content on your site and look at the interrelationships between what you say is important -- i.e. what you place prominently – and what you actual discuss in the body of your presentation.

One reason for this is that they want to identify and de-list spamdexing websites. The other, is that they simply want to provide the best and most comprehensively relevant results to their searchers.

So, in the case of two sites that Google otherwise ranks at the same value, it will give preference to the one that has to most in-depth discussion of the keyword topic in its body text.

In terms of specific guidelines for the number of times a keyword should be used in the body text of a page, a good target desnity would be 3-5 times pre page for your top keyword relevant to that page, and 1-2 times for any secondary or additional keywords that are relevant to that page and can be squeezed in.

The assumption here is that these pages would include a minimum of 250 words of body content. For pages that include significantly more text a guideline maximum limit for your top keyword as a ratio of all words would be no more than 1/25. For secondary and additional keywords, a ratio of 1/50 is always appropriate.

6. Additional Locations

One of the essential aspects of search that Google has grasped intimately and which has made them so popular is that search represents the thoughts, desires, expectations, and hopes of searchers.

The most successful websites are those that not only provide practical, relevant, easy-to-access, and valuable content, but those that provide such content on the topics that searchers are most interested in.

Thus, leveraging your keyword research to act as a guide to the topics that your website will provide content about can be a hugely powerful initial step to gaining high search engine rankings and to building the greatest possible traffic volumes and popularity for your website.

Choosing Primary & Secondary Keywords

For the greatest chance of success, your primary and secondary keywords should be those that are:

• Most relevant to the topics you intend to explore in the valuable content on your website.

• As closely aligned with the most popular keywords related to your topic areas as possible.