Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - 10 people; 10 opinions, that is what you'll get when asking how search engine optimization works. However, there are some fundamental techniques that are universal. At Clickdriven Marketing Group, we have developed search engine optimization techniques that have proven to be extremely effective.

Search engine optimization is like a credit score. The ever famous algorithm is what search engines use and the FICO score is what credit bureaus use, and the FICO score actually is an algorithm. FICO is just a brand name of the algorithm. Regardless of branded names and how the algorithms are constructed from search engine to search engine, the mechanism works like this: there is no one thing you can do for a sure thing, and no one thing you can do for a sure miss. Just like credit, no one thing gives you great credit and no one thing ruins your credit. Pay your bills on time and you will have good credit, have good content and you will rank well in search engines.

Everything you do either in search engine optimization or in your credit has a point value assigned to it, either positive or negative, small point value or large point value. The concern is that search engine companies do not want you to know what items have what value – but it is our job at Clickdriven Marketing Group to find out! We stay on top of the market everyday researching the latest trends and developing and redeveloping our proven methods.

I must admit, up until this article I have kept this information closely guarded in a stack of yellow legal paper mostly written in hieroglyphics. So I have decided to lay it out right here, hopefully in an order you can understand. You are welcome to use this information to help you get your website ranked higher in search engines. If you wonder why we are giving this information out for free and not charging.... because we are open source (1) kinda guys.

Step 1 – page selection

Select one page to optimize. Lets say your website is about footwear, then you have an area or category about sneakers, then a page about red sneakers. You entire focus should be on “red sneakers”. Keep in mind that when your website shows up on a search engine, it really is only one page showing up, based on relevancy of that page to the users search query.

Step 2 – keyword analysis

Choose 10 – 15 keywords specific to the page you are on. Using the red sneaker example you need to know what users type in their search query when they go to a search engine to find information on red sneakers. Do not do this on speculation. This is the single biggest mistake on keyword analysis, never choose keywords based on what you think people will use to find your page. Base it on what users have already done and are doing now. In the last 30, 60 and 90 days what search words have all of the people that went to search engines used for their search on red sneakers?

There are different resources available on the Internet to find this information. One of our favorites is the Resource Center at Yahoo Search. It is a great tool and fairly easy to use. The website itself is a little sticky and sometimes is not operating correctly. But if you can get past these oddities they do provide you a wealth of information at no cost. You can visit their resource center by going to the Google Keyword Selector, I wont get into the details of the tool itself, just how to use it.

Here is how you use the keyword selector: start with your core phrase for the page, “red sneakers”.

At the time I used the tool here's what came back:

red sneaker
ecko red sneaker
pimp red sneaker
red slipper sneaker sox
red converse sneaker

Interesting, uh? Remember this information is based on real searches. So armed with this information do you want to include a words such as slipper, ecko, converse, or pimp into the content of your page about red sneakers? Yes, yes you do. This is a strategic move behind search engine optimization techniques. Then you play with and “spin” different words related to red sneakers in the keyword selector tool. Such as the word sneaker itself and may the word red.

Step 3 – write your content

Take those 10 – 15 keywords you have identified and build a story around those keywords. You can use more than 10 – 15 keywords per page, but what we found is that you start too stretch it so much you actually dilute the content of the page. It is more important to have relative enriching content, but if you start to stretch it to a different area, consider putting that content on another page.

This step is very important: If you had one sentence to tell the world about what was on that one page of your website, what would you write? This is important because it is going to be your actual meta-description that we are going to hard code into your website. Glad you are reading the details of this search engine optimization article because this is important. One of the factors in the algorithm is how high up the page the relevant keywords are. Yes the higher they are physically on the page the better they score.

So the first sentence on the page about red sneakers, should have 2 – 5 of the most important keywords in it, and it will also be the sentence that represents the entire page.

Step 4 – image tags

This is a brief step. Any images you use on your page, be sure to add “Alternate Text” and an “Image Title”. This is becoming increasingly important as all of the major search engines are creating technologies that allow “crawlers” to “read” images. How you add these items will vary depending on what editor you are using.

Step 5 – meta-tags

There are many different meta-tags that can be used. We will cover the most important ones, and what they should entail. You can also use meta-rating, meta-http, and other meta-tags , but we are sticking with the basics for this article and the ones that score the highest in the algorithms.

title: The title is not actually a meta-tag, but very important. Here is an example of one -

<title>Clickdriven Marketing Group – Website Development and Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization</title>

meta-description: Your meta-description will be the sentence we identified above in creating the page content. It is the first and most important sentence on the page. The meta-description is the sentence or two that shows up the search engine results describing what is on that web page. Here is an example -

meta-keywords: This can be a tricky area, and am reluctant to disclose that Google actually does not use meta-keywords. Some search engine optimizers are no longer using the meta-keyword. I disagree with this based on the large percentages of searches covered by the other major players. It is extra work and it can be hard work. But it is one of those areas that increases your overall score in the greater algorithm. This is an example of a meta-keyword -

meta-robots: These are specific commands to the search engine “crawlers”. They can include things such as, what content to index and what they should do when they come across links. Here is an example -

Step 6 – HTML and XML site map

Now that you have content based on your keyword analysis and proper meta-tags, you have to be sure search engines can find you and all the content. Not the only way, but the best way for search engines to find your content is through a site map.

HTML Site Map – This is the most recognized and conventional site map, and here why it is needed on most sites. If you use images, flash or Javascript for your navigation menu, it may be difficult if not impossible for search engine crawlers to follow your links. Search engine crawlers can not read or follow most flash or Javascript. They can follow an image that is linked, but they do not know what the image says. Again falling back to assigning point values where everything is positive or negative to some degree. It is not that necessarily not having a HTML site map is negative, but having one is positive.

Be sure to have your navigation link to your site map as linked text. By adding it to your Javascript menu is useless. The usual and very effective means to adding an HTML site map is to have it at the bottom of your site, usually in the footer near your Terms of Use and Privacy Policy areas. If you want to have a site map navigation link on your flash, image or Javascript menu you can still do that to assist site visitors in addition to a text link in the footer or header area of your site. Remember the text link is the important part.

XML Site Map– An XML site map is an XML feed directly for search engines' crawlers use. There are many different ways to create one and different methods to have it submitted to search engines, but the point being you definitely should have one. Because there are varied methods and your frequency settings are very important. We recommend if you need help setting one up, just do a search on “xml site map”.

Step 7 – search engine submission

Okay your ready, let the search engines know you are ready. Search engines will naturally find you. The days of having to submit your site to search engines are pretty much over. However, it could take some time for them to naturally find you. In some cases it could take months. So to speed things up you can “queue” the search engine to come and index your site on there next sweep. To do this read our “Search engine Submission”.

Things to keep in mind:

Most important is understanding how search engines actually work. When you go to Google, Yahoo or what ever your preferred search engine is, and type in a query2, the search engine does not go to your website or across the Internet at that time. What search engines do is “crawl” your website periodically and then index the information in its own internal archives. To learn more about how search engines work and the different types of search engines, read “How search Engines Work”.

As basic as this sounds, search engines are actually search engine companies. They are not social programs or government informational sites. They are for profit commercial enterprises, giants in most cases. There profitability and success reallies on the core underpinnings of this: Harvesting and indexing enriching content from websites then organizing that information for quick recollection by a third party, the user of the search engine. If search engines return junk in there search results, it will fail. If a search engine brings back current up to date enriching content in its search results it will do well.

Search engines do not want you to know the point values in their algorithms, but they do want you to follow certain standards and communicate with them.

Different search engine companies use different formulas or algorithms to determine your ranking, and as powerful a player Google is, don't place all your stock in complying to their standards alone. Yahoo and MSN are major players also.

Things you should not do:

Never use keywords that are not in the content of the page.
Never write a meta-description that is not an exact quote from your page.
As recent as a few years ago, link exchanges worked. But the search engines understand the trickery behind link exchanges. A search engine has the ability to follow the link through to the site you are link to and measure the quality of the traffic from that site. As an example if you are a website about fashion design and you have a link on your site going to a site about food products and they have a link going to a site that has adult content.... the search engines understand what is going on here, and will assign a negative value. Linking to other sites is good by nature, but a “link exchange” is bad.
This is one of my favorite old school tricks. Believe it or not, some still do it. The more you reference a keyword in the content of your site the more favorable the points you are assigned in the algorithm. So the trick was to type keywords over and over hundreds of times on the bottom of the page. They would be typed in the same color as the background color, not allowing the site visitor to see the words but the search engine crawlers would index and score them. This way it just looked like a few blank lines at the bottom of the page. So now the search engines will assign a negative point value if the font color is the same or too close to the background color.

As you have seen search engine optimization can be a very complex process. If you have questions or need help, you are welcome to contact us.

1 Open source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in. To learn more about open source and the Open Source Initiative, click here.

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