Article#002 : Webpage Search Engine Optimization - SEO 101

Page Title

By far the single most important element when it comes search engine optimization (or S.E.O for short) is your web page title. That is in HTML : <title>My Wonderful Website</title>. I can not stress enough the importance of your page title but I can tell you that I have seen many-a-my-own web site page(s) start from earning a reasonable amount of Google search traffic each day to disappearing from search results completely when by accident one day : my page titles vanished.

What is a proper page title? A proper page title consists of a sentence or two ( or even just a few words ) - a specifically targeted keyphrase which does a good job of describing the content on your page! - This is the content of your PAGE and NOT the content of your entire website. Do not try to describe everything that your site offers in one page title. A page title is also NOT all the keywords that you want to target for your website. One keyphrase is optimal. A keyphrase that people are likely to type while searching is even more ideal.

A page titled "Log Cabin Homes" is more targeted then a page titled "Log Homes, Log Cabins, Canadian Log Home Builders". How often do people search for the phrase "Log Homes, Log Cabins, Canadian Log Home Builders"? Just about never but people search for the phrase "Log Cabin Builder" very often and if the content of your page is also optimized for the phrase "Log Cabin Homes" chances are good that your page will do well for the phrase "Log Cabins Homes".

HTML Content

Speaking of page content. It is also important how well you format the content on your pages. Probably the most important formatting is your HTML heading tag. These are the <H1>, <H2> (etc) tags. It is not a bad idea to use the same text in your heading tag that you have used in your page title, this should add weight to your primary keyphrase.

Meta Tags

Are meta tags important? Well - sort of. The only really important meta tag is the meta description tag. The meta keywords tag is almost not used at-all by search engines anymore. This tag is displayed in search engines under your page title so at least is is important to have a well described page. Getting the search result is phase 1, getting the searcher too click your site is phase 2. So in that light, your meta description can be very important. How much bearing does it have in search results? Well I do not personally believe that the weight of the meta description is huge or anything but it is at least a moderate relevance and worth writing well.

Bolds, Italics And Colors. Oh My!

It is rumored that bolding and coloring keywords so that they stand out against the background of your page does indeed increase the weight of that keyword or phrase... I personally do not bother with this buy it may help! Don't go crazy with it though. In SEO - its all about density, not quantity.. But we will save density for a later article.

More Formatting

Hand-coding. This is the fine line between great SEO and mediocre SEO. Use paragraph tags to format your paragraphs, use line breaks in other cases. Many HTML code tags we're designed for specific purpose's. If you obey the purpose of HTML tags : chances are that a search engine bot is going to have a much easier time understanding the content of your page.

Content Pages

Many webmasters have a strong desire to build "super-sites" - which are meant merely to "wow" anyone who comes to visit both with special features such as drop down menus, Flash animation, spectacular graphics... WRONG! First of all, most of your visitors do not care. Second, all these special features, graphics, whatever... only distract from the content of your pages. Generally visitors who come to your site are looking for solid content.. An answer to a question, product information, whatever it may be : they do not come to your web site looking for a fancy presentation. If you insist on a fancy website - chances are that you are only gratifying yourself.

Now do not get me wrong, I am not saying that presentation does not count... but instead of working the content of your site around your sites presentation - you should be working your sites presentation around its content.

Simple and clean.. But attractive and professional. This is a winning mix. Content is king.

How Much Weight Does Your Domain Name Have?

It is my opinion that using keywords in your domain name has very little relevance in your search results. I am not going to say NO relevance : But the weight is certainly small and, at least in my opinion : not worth buying a long and stupid domain name like great-used-cars.com to try to improve your search engine ranking.

Keyword Density

What is keyword density you ask? Welp : have you ever wondered how much content on your page is enough? How much is too much? How many times you should use your keyword/phrase? The answer to these questions is found somewhere in keyword density. First off : it is important to have a few paragraphs of text on your page. A single line usually won't cut it in the eyes of the search engines. Keyword density means the number of keywords in relation to the number of words on your page. If your keyword is "gold" and you have 10 words on your page (including "gold") then your keyword density for the keyword "gold" would be 10%.

An optimal keyword density ranges anywhere between 6.5% and 8.5%. There are many tools that will analyze the keyword density of your pages. I advise using Google to find a few if you want to get that fanatic about page optimization. But generally speaking : a perfectly optimized page is not guaranteed to do better then another relevant, well written page which has no keyword density optimization at-all. It may help, it may not. Keyword density should be a general guide at best and not a religion.

Anyhow that's it for today. Go now and create great web pages. Tune in next time for SEO 102.