SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Basics Part I

Filed Under (Free SEO) by admin on 13-09-2009

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The first thing you should know about SEO is that Consistency is the key word.
Because of that, in this first article I will cover the immediate things that relate to
solid Search Engine Ranks for particular number of key phrases. This will apply to any type of website, on any industry you are targeting. Lets review first 5 areas:

Search Engines Rank web pages, not web sites.
You should have unique Titles, Descriptions and Keywords in your pages. Therefore,
there should be only one page per keyword phrase you are targeting, highly focused
on that phrase. You can also target as many related combinations of your phrase as searches are using to find it, as long as you have individual pages focused for them.

Your web site has to be relevant to searchers, not just the search engine.
One very important area of SEO is to be well-balanced. There many variables that
matter when it comes to optimizing a site, there is not a specific area were all the
effort should be on. Instead focus on achieving a Top 10 Position, and here is why:
It is OK to be number 5 or number 3 in any given rank If you are in the 1st spot and you are clicked simply because that spot gets more clicks, are you really going to get more of whatever your sites goal is just because you are the number 1?

Less is more, when it comes to targeted keywords.
If you have like most, an average site, focus on 5-10 keywords. Build your entire site around these keywords. Remember to be relevant to searches using these keywords. You should rather have one keyword for which your site is on the Top 10 (first page), than ten that are on secondary pages. Put those keywords in your Title, Description, and Keyword areas, and remember the uniqueness factor.

Build real content for people, not for machines.
It is said that content is king, and for a good reason. When two sites highly optimized in a particular industry for a particular key phrase compete, this is
one of the most important areas Search Engines evaluate for relevancy, and
therefore positioning. Keep your content updated either by adding new, or by
editing existing one. The relation between content and its freshness is a must.

Tell me who links to you, who you link to, and I will tell you who you are.
Yes, linking is that important in SEO. You must have incoming links, but what really matters, is that you must have quality incoming links, and you must build them all naturally. Search Engines reward sites when their links are build steadily over time.

Understanding Stop Words, and How to Avoid Them.

Filed Under (SEO Tips) by admin on 16-07-2009

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To understand how to avoid stop words, you first have to understand what stop words are. Search engines have words or phrases that are considered stop words. When a spider or crawler encounters one of these stop words, they will immediately leave your website and any information they gathered from it will not be saved in their database. This means that your website will not be indexed. If your website is already indexed in a searched engine, the crawler will come back to see if there are updates — and if it finds stop words when it does this, then your site could get banned from the search engine. You will not be allowed to remove the words and re-submit: its too late.

Different search engines have different lists, but some are nearly universal usually words that refer to sites with graphic sexual content, or other adult material. We cant really put a list here, or youd never find this page! You should be able to tell what they are for the most part, but remember, pornographic web sites will often get indexed as well. The norm for search engines is that they will attempt to avoid content that is illegal. When they encounter adult oriented sites, they will generally only ban sites that contain especially vulgar or illegal materials. The problem being that many of these sorts of sites will use gateway pages that have no content other than click here to enter. These sites are less likely to be caught with the stop word censors.

These arent the only stop words, however. Some search engines create different lists of stop words for each different kind of website. What does this mean? Well, the algorithms which rank the pages determine how many times on a page a keyword is listed. Keep in mind that there are people trying to keyword stuff their pages to improve their ranking. If a word is not relevant to your site, dont list it in your key words. This is one easy way to avoid losing your index privileges. There is no reason to try to lure people into your site on key words that dont apply as they will not stick around long enough to provide you with revenue anyway.

Now you might be asking what keyword stuffing is. Keyword stuffing is when someone uses the same keywords over and over again in the meta tags and the content of the web page. If youre searching the web and you come across a website that seems to be ranked far too highly, then keyword stuffing is usually to blame. The search engines work hard to stop people from using these kinds of tactics, and usually de-list sites that they find to be using them. Thats why some sites can be listed near the top for a while, before one day seemingly disappearing altogether.

Some sites, however, get ejected for repeated keywords, even though these sites arent trying to keyword stuff. This is where keyword analysis comes into play. To avoid repeating the same word or phrase too many times, you need to analyze your pages before you submit them you wouldnt want your efforts at finding good keywords to go to waste.

Although search engine optimization is a long-term effort, the processes and rules change frequently, without any warning. There are, however, tools available that will help you to stay on top of whats going on in SEO. Many tools can be tried out at no cost, letting you try before you buy. There are so many to choose from that you cant just start downloading them you will want to read the information on each tool before you make a decision.

By using these tools before you submit your pages to any search engines, you will fully understand “stop words” and how to avoid them! You need to keep in mind, though, that different search engines have different stop word lists, so words that dont matter to one search engine can stop your site from being listed on another.

There are also some words that arent included in searches, such as and, of, the, and other small words. You should keep these words out of your meta tags, as theyre just a waste of space.