Search Engine Optimization Basics

These search engine optimization basics should be followed on every page of your website. You want the search engines to find your highly valued pages so concentrate the search engine optimization basics on those pages first and then work on your auxiliary pages when you have time.

Please remember that links are only one part of getting to the top of the search engines.

For links to be of most use, you should follow the Search Engine Optimization Basics:


1) Find out the most popular search phrases that you want your site to be found for. A great tool is the DigitalPoint keyword suggestion tool
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/ . Why get to the top of something that no one is searching for.

2) Find out the competition for those terms on Google - what is the Pr of each page, where are the search phrases on that page, how many back links for each page

3) Once you have decided on the search phrases, have one page on your site dedicated to each search phrase. The index page can cope with more than one phrase as it generally has more PR than other pages in your site.

Use that search phrase in the url. I use city-widgets.php ie dashes '-' separating the words. Use lowercase characters, as Google only highlights (currently) the lowercase words.  Again, search engine optimzation basics.  Nothing fancy here, but it works!

If you have two pages for each phrase, or have the search phrase mentioned on the index page as well, you have a good chance of getting an indented result on Google - two pages of your site shown for that search term.


4) Everything is important, but the title is the most important. The search phrase you decide on should be the first words of your title.

5) Have a look on a Google search - how many letters are shown of the title. You will find that around 65 characters is the max shown, so keep your titles to that length.

6) The meta description is fantastic, as you can have a great sales pitch using 149 characters about your page. Again, have a look at how Google highlights the search phrases in the results - it generally highlights the first three instances of that phrase. So use the phrase two or three times in the meta description.

7) Always use properly formed sentences for your meta description. Google prefers properly formed sentences. It can sense when you have lists of keywords. Looks like spam.

8 ) Google will use the most English sounding sentence using the 2-3 first instances of your search phrase. So most often, Google will use the meta description for its snippet.

9) Use the search phrase in the  h1 tag - use css to style it so that it fits into the formatting of your page.

10) Now Google is designed so that it tries to give the most relevant results for users, so unless your search phrase is actually in the text, you stand little chance of ranking for that phrase (you need heaps of links to get it showing).

So I have a term I call "Firstwords" - Have an opening paragraph using your search term. Like the meta description, use the search phrase twice in the first 149 characters, then sprinkle the phrase around the text of that page.

ie, if you want to get top for "City Widgets" you actually need that phrase in your text, having "Widgets in City" as the phrase in your text will not get you as high as if you used the actual phrase you want to get top for.

11) Obviously you believe that links are important, otherwise you would not be here. So how about using internal links within your website. If you want to rank top for "City Widgets", then refer to that page as "City Widgets". If your home page is optimized for "City Widgets", instead of linking on the word "Home" link on "City Widgets" (home) - ie put the words "Home" in brackets next to it. Who wants to get top for the search phrase "home".

12) Site architecture - VBulletin has a number of problems like more than one url per page, and poor PR distribution around the site... My SEO VBulletin hack (see my sig) looks after both the site architecture and how to have the best title, meta description, firstwords etc on the site. Have a read of the first couple of pages - the principles actually apply as equally to phpBB and other forums. Have a look on Google at the SEO hacks for your specific forum, or content management system.

13) Use the search phrase in bold, italics, underlined... through your text.

14) Use a site map. Remember that PR goes down one point for each click into the site up to around 80 links per page. So, have site maps with say 80-100 links per page, and have that site map linked from every pae. Therefore the site map will have around the PR of your front page, and every page linked from that site map will only be PR less one of your index page (apart from any external linking onto each page)

Have you have applied these search engine optimization basics it is time for external links.

So you have now done as much as you can with the resources you have. Now you need links from outside, to get both Google PR, and anchor text value into your pages.

15) So for a page with the title "City Widgets..." - get a link using the Link Vault with that phrase "City Widgets". Then when you are top for that phrase, or you want a change, use say "Widgets in City" - but make sure that you actually have that phrase mentioned several times in the text, if possible, using the formula mentioned above, or have separate pararaphs that use that new phrase.



Doing the above will mean that you get the most benefit from the links obtained via the link-vault. Be the best that you can be. Get to the top of the search engines.

The above search engine optimization basics list is by no means complete, but it covers some of the main principles.

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