Want to hurt your website, Give you Website an overdose of SEO

Our aim, I mean every web business owner’s aim is to get to the top of the search engine ranking, with the 1st spot of the first SERP being the dream location. Our focus remains the top position or the top ones on the SERPs. We focus on how to get our web pages keyword rich with loads of healthy back links. Ha, so true, we have seen people getting to the top, getting the visibility yet, this resulted in the users frustration when some good for nothing sites propped up, filled with Google Ads.

Our friends at Google witnessed this for too long. Kept quite but worked at the same time to find ways of reducing the appearance of the over optimized sites and give the good sites a chance, that were not so much optimized but had something natural at their end, I mean, not so many keywords and with naturally built back links. These sites were built with purpose and intent.

The inevitable change came. People had to pay for the over optimized efforts, and got penalized.

If you truly want to hurt your website’s visibility do fall into the footsteps of the black hat SEO specialists.

Build your focus on quantity – The best way to get your web pages penalized by Google is to stuff the web page content with the keywords. Make the web content for the search engines robots and trigger their attention to get fast ranking and top positioning.

Buy Links – Links matter most. Your effort to get your site de ranked will be fulfilled if you buy links from link farms. It does not matter now from where these links come. Unless you web page is linked with other websites, your purpose of over SEO is being met.

The search engines previously did not pay attention to the relevance and the quality of links, web content and the keyword density being used in the web content. It though made the content meaningless, but it got the web business owner the top position on the search engine results pages.

This would not happen now. If you want to thrive on the web learn through the Google SEO guidelines. Like over eating is bad for our health, over optimization is bad for the health and the survival of your website. Search engines have got smarter and want us to play the SEO game on the level playing field. No unethical SEO practices please.

SEO – The Intent of Search Engine Optimization

They show the bundle of greens in most of images, enticing the web visitors to click through and learn about SEO. Showing the dog, the bone and forcing the thought of getting rich overnight onto the cash starved people. Does SEO get to you the bundle of greens that fast? Well, if this were true, Harry would have been a billionaire. Let’s get to the bottom of the truth of bagging the bundle of greens through search engine optimization.

To get rich through SEO, we need to understand the web visitors. Ranking high does not guarantee business, let alone the greens that lure you towards the world of the web. Understanding the need of the web visitors when they conduct a search, study the problems of the web visitors with the range of products and services you are offering and how to create an appealing web presence that could make the web visitors stay on your web page and buy.

What is SEO, by the way? The acronym stands for search engine optimization or search engine optimizer. The former relates to the search engine marketing activity in which we make our sites search engine friendly and prepare it to be index by the search engines and expect that the site would be returned in the list of first 10 websites that appear on the first page of search engine ranking results. The later means the person who does the optimization bit. The skilled person who is expected to know be familiar with the search engine algorithm and can optimize the websites for higher search engine ranking.

Good, so you talk to the search engine optimization expert and get your website ranked higher. Say the first page, first spot. Than what happens. Even when people visit your website and click away to another destination by conducting a similar search and your website is not present there, the business flies off to someone else.

The intent of the search needs to be understood here. Not all visitors are customers but those who are serious buyers and do not find worthwhile information, walk away in disgust, never to return back.

Off Page Optimization – Getting the link juice from SEO

Too much has been said about the On-Page SEO. Too many people stress on the basic SEO elements that have to do with the web pages. SEO is a large area where getting backs play a vital role. The new search algorithm demand’s getting more one way back links from relevant and authoritative websites to anchor your hold on the search engines and also to get better search engine rankings. What needs to be done in the off-page optimization? I asked my friend who is now is Dallas and is running a SEO company in Dallas, Texas.

“Off-page optimization is an interesting part of SEO process and an important one too” he replied to my question. “If you are a social animal, you would love to talk to people, meet people, interact and leave your traces; so much so that the people coming into your net follow your trail and link back to you in appreciation of the valuable information being shared. These will, naturally be, people belonging to the same interest group, or the market niche or will be the people hunting for solution through the products and services that you are commenting and talking about. It’s that simple.” “Get the point,” he said. “All the people linking back will be relevant, some might be bigger than you, people that command authority on the net. How would you feel if you get linked with an influential person and can take benefit of his connection? My friend, the web works the same way in the Off Page SEO.”

“Getting into the following will help,” he said.

• Blogs
• Forums
• Press Releases
• Blog commenting
• Article writing and submissions
• Blog submissions
• Submitting your website to web directories
• Link Wheel development
• Social Bookmarking

“Participating in the niche forums and commenting in the blogs will leave trails. These will lead many people to your web pages, so would the press releases, articles. Directory submission too will get you back links. You have a lot to play with; you can also employ social networks to build your links,” he commented.

I figured out that there is a lot to do when we start with the Off-Page search engine optimization. We need to be focused and need to spend time on our computers and with the search engines Web 2.0 sites.

Monitor your SEO expertise – Google Analytics help

Google Analytics have been here for quite some time now. The SEO gurus and experts have a gate way opened for them and now are in the arms length of monitoring the performance of their optimized web pages. The strategy change and adjustments have become easier. We no longer need to beat about the bush; we have everything in front of us in the form of Google Analytics report helping us to measure our websites performance.

A tool by Google that helps us getting customized reports on our websites performs, user behavior, most visited pages, which keywords have performed well in generating more traffic and similar stuff that helps the web masters to articulate the SEO strategy for better search engine ranking.

Let’s take a deeper look. Dan is a SEO expert. When we met and discussed SEO he was all over the place with the analytics. “If you don’t keep a regular check on analytics you will not know what is happening with your website’s performances. If you want to understand what on the earth triggers your website visitors to click through and arrive at your website and from which place on the internet they are entering your website. The exiting points are also outlined and hence tell the owners of the website and the webmasters how to tailor the website for its best performance.”

“Great, but does it tells us exactly from which source the web traffic is arriving at our website?” I asked. “Yes, it breaks down the points. If the traffic is flow through Yahoo, Bing or Google, it will tell you exactly how many do arrive through different search engines. Whether the visitors are coming through PPC ads, it will point that too. It will also tell you whether the traffic is coming through Face book, Twitter, Press Releases, articles or blogs.”

“Yet, my friend, if your browser is not cookie enabled it will not be read by Google Analytics. This tells us that, though very useful for the insight of your website’s performance, Google Analytics does not give a 100% picture. People with cookies blocked while browsing the net get left out.

On the whole the analytic gives us great measurement of performance results and helps us in our SEO strategy.

Why is Meta Description Tag Important?

We had just yesterday discussed the Meta Title Tag. We know why it is important. Moving beyond this let me tell you about the description Tag. I had learnt fast. Fast enough to do the On-Page Optimization for my website. The biggest and the tricky hurdle in my effort that made me spend more time was the keyword research. But now, once the keywords have been selected I can move ahead fast.

This is how your Meta Description Tag looks like < Meta name="description" content="#">

“Is it important?” I had asked my tutor. I asked a silly question. He told me it is important as this snippet tell the readers about the web page and its content. After reading the meta tag, the website visitors go through this summery to decide whether clicking on the link would be worth while or not.

“It should not be more than 250 characters (with spaces). Here bigger is not better, it will left out by the search engines. So make it precise and to the point.”

Leaving the Meta Title Tag blank harms your SEO process, but if we leave the Description Tag unfilled, you would find that Google and the Bing will fill it up for you. I learnt that the web pages description tag must contain the some very important keyword relating to the web page being optimized. Hence, when the user‘s query is made, the search engines return your website displayed on the SERPs. The position i.e. the placement on the search engines results page depends how effectively you have made your description and title tags.

It is difficult to please the search engines and the web users in 250 characters summery displayed as description. Practice will make you perfect. It is an interesting test of you English drafting skills.

People might end up making Meta Description Tag that might look spammy to the web visitors. With the generic description i.e. the snippet picked up by the search engines might be interesting for the search engines. Thus, we need to create the description tag that are more meaningful and those that do not look like keyword stuffed Descriptions made for SEO purpose only.

What to do next in SEO – Have gone through Keyword Research

Keyword research is a complex area of SEO. If anyone thinks it is easy, he can take a walk. Perceptions have no place in the keyword research. If you think that you know the right keywords without checking them out, you are wrong. You need to go through the process. Our customers think differently, you would too think differently if you go out to buy something. Similarly our perceptions deceive us. We need to make a thorough research. I have been there. I have done what you might think of doing and believe me; you will find yourself in a mess.

Get ready for trip. Once we have selected the keywords and the search terms to optimize our website, we must first check these search terms for the current competition level.

We move ahead to build Meta Tags. The HTML tags that still have a say in the SEO and now out of three important Meta Tags, just two have maintain their important position in the On-Page SEO. Yup, I am talking about the Meta Title Tag and the Meta Description Tag. Keyword tag has lost its place, though you can use Meta keyword tag too, during the On-Page Optimization, if it is not useful, it will not harm your SEO process.

Meta Title Tag, my tutor told me that this is the heart of the On-Page SEO. This tag is displayed by the search engine in the search results and is the first line, hyper-linked to the relevant web page. This is the link that the web user clicks, if he finds it interesting. So build you Meta title tag correctly and make it interesting. Make it relevant to the users query and do not, he DO NOT stuff keywords. Use keywords in the Meta Title Tag but do it intelligently.

“Make is interesting. Do it for the search engines, but do it for your web visitors too. If the web visitors find it uninteresting, you will not get the needed visitors”, he had said.

I am practicing to make powerful title tags. You must too, redesign your title tags and make them as is being preached by my tutor.

Learning SEO – 15 minutes or more

Reading through the SEO e-book and a few search engine optimization tutorials on the web made me realize how easy it is to learn SEO. Actually, I had been living in the fools land till now, thinking that SEO needed me to learn the software development basic skills. This is exactly what pushed me away from the learning optimization.

My research on the subject and my friend’s guidance led me to a number of valuable informative pages on the web.

Though very interestingly told, the learning curve, the beginning of the SEO process titled as the basics of SEO led me to understand the keywords remain central to the SEO strategy. This is easy to understand. We as visitors to the web do conduct our searches by keying in search terms. Sometimes we search with vague terms but many a times we are searching very specifically for goods and services.

The core of keyword research as they tell me is to arrive at the right set of keywords, as the correctness and the relevance will make or break the situation. Make us thrive on the web or make us lose the internet marketing game.

Understanding keywords

Conceptually, the keywords are the prime words that relate to your products, services or the marketing niche. I had to dig deeper to understand the process of keyword research.

Keyword research tools like Google Keyword tool, Word Tracker or Good Keywords help us to arrive at the selected keywords. We need to list down our search terms and check these on Google, Yahoo and the Bing to see the competition that we face for these search terms.

They also tell us in their SEO e-book that we have to go for lesser competitive keywords if we want ourselves to be seen on the web search results. Face less competition at first and then go for the bigger move.

Yes, Learning SEO is easy, but the fact of the matter is, putting it to practice is difficult. We understand the first steps but I guess practice makes the man perfect. I have requested my friend to let me help him in some SEO projects where he will supervise and I will work. Guess this is the best way to learn.