| This is part one of two articles listing the ten most | | | | without. The benefit to not using commas is that the |
| important points to remember when optimising your | | | | keywords side by side can also be read as |
| site and individual pages for the search engines.If you | | | | keyphrases by the SE's. Where as a comma |
| optimise your pages by working through these points | | | | separates everything out. So not using commas |
| one by one you will see a significant rise in your | | | | allows for some odd combinations to be picked up by |
| search engine rankings. | | | | the SE's. |
| 1: Buy the right Domain names ! | | | | <meta name="keywords" |
| The best way to increase your rankings in the | | | | content=" best exercise equipment cheap |
| Search Engines and for the least amount of effort is | | | | home gym equipment health good exercise order |
| to choose the right domain name for your site from | | | | online"> |
| the start. The SE's(search engines) give a domain | | | | That's just an example off the top of my head I |
| name the highest prominence and score when | | | | haven't researched the words as I normally would, |
| providing search results. So it's a priority to have your | | | | you should also have much more in there around 30 |
| domain name contain keywords relevant to your site | | | | words at least. Notice again I've started of with 'best |
| content. | | | | exercise equipment' to echo and boost the use of |
| Further to this you should make your keywords | | | | that phrase elsewhere as discussed above. |
| readable by the search engine, otherwise you're | | | | The description is self explanatory again and it's a |
| wasting your time. To do this is very simple you just | | | | good move to echo the title of the page and fill it |
| use hyphens in the name.eg and | | | | out a little so - |
| exercise-equipment.com, the first name here may | | | | <meta name="description" |
| look neater to the casual observer and could and | | | | content="best exercise equipment - best, |
| should be used to advertise your site offline its easier | | | | cheap, new and used exercise equipment reviewed |
| to remember and to type. But to the SE's this is | | | | and available to order online"> |
| meaningless, they can't pick out the keywords in | | | | The robots tag is very simple and is not strictly |
| there. The hyphen breaks the keywords apart and | | | | necessary but useful. What it does is tell the visiting |
| allows the SE's to read them. | | | | SE spiders what to do when it comes to listing your |
| You can have both sites pointing to the same | | | | site. Spiders are the little programs that crawl the |
| website but the one with the hyphens should be the | | | | web gathering info on websites for the SE's. You can |
| domain name that is actually hosted. | | | | also use something called a robots.txt file to further |
| The other point to remember is that domain names | | | | control the spiders, but I won't go into that here |
| can now have up to 67 characters in them including | | | | since its not strictly necessary and the robots tag is |
| the extension(.com, .net etc) now as opposed to the | | | | enough for our aims at the moment. |
| original 23. So you can load your domain name with a | | | | Here's an example - |
| number of keywords to boost your ranking, just | | | | <meta name="robots" content |
| remember to use the hyphen to separate them out. | | | | ="index, follow"> |
| This also means that if a really great domain name | | | | With this we're telling the spider/robot to follow all |
| has gone you can get something close and in fact | | | | the links when visiting this page. |
| better because you could simply add another | | | | If you have a members area or an admin area on |
| keyword. Eg say wasn't available, I could register | | | | your site that you don't want listed in the SE's, or |
| best-exercise or | | | | any other pages you want to keep to yourself then |
| I have a number of clients using this technique very | | | | you can use this - |
| successfully, and of course if you check out the | | | | <meta name="robots" content |
| address bar above this very site does the same | | | | ="index,no follow"> |
| thing. ;-) | | | | Other tags that may or may not be useful included |
| For the cheapest domain names online with the best | | | | from this page - |
| control panel online try I highly recommend these | | | | <meta name="author" |
| guys I've used them for years now and register all | | | | content="how to make money |
| my own and my clients domains through them. | | | | online"> |
| 2: Choose the right Title for your page. | | | | <meta http-equiv="expires" |
| The title of your page is what visitors will see across | | | | content="0"> |
| the top of their browsers when they visit your site. | | | | <meta name="resource-type" |
| Its important that each of your sites pages is titled | | | | content="document"> |
| differently to distinguish them from each other and | | | | <meta name="distribution" |
| to tie in with the content of the page. | | | | content="global"> |
| This is also the title of your listing when your site is | | | | <meta name="revisit-after" |
| returned in the results of a Search Engine. | | | | content="1 days"> |
| This is probably the second most important thing to | | | | <meta name="rating" |
| get right after choosing your domain name. If your | | | | content="general"> |
| domain name has good keywords then repeat these | | | | <meta name="generator" |
| keywords in the title of your page, add a hyphen and | | | | content="php-nuke 6.8 - copyright 2003 by |
| then add your keyword rich title for that page. So | | | | <meta name="copyright" |
| going back to the example above your title should | | | | content="copyright (c) 2003 by to make |
| probably be along the lines of best exercise | | | | money online"> |
| equipment - best, cheap, new and used exercise | | | | In general I wouldn't use any of the above tags |
| equipment. | | | | other than author and maybe revisit-after. Since using |
| <title>best exercise equipment - best, cheap, | | | | them will push the text content of your page further |
| new and used exercise equipment< itle> | | | | from the top of your document. |
| Notice how I get exercise equipment in there twice, | | | | A well known and very useful tool for checking out |
| first as the name of the site and then as a | | | | what search words people are using on the SE's is |
| description of the page. | | | | Wordtracker. When you know what people are |
| I've mentioned keywords a fare bit already and I | | | | searching for you know what keywords and |
| should probably say jump down to No5 for a better | | | | keyphrases you should be weaving into your website. |
| idea of what they are and how to use them. | | | | This tool is used by all the online Marketing experts. |
| 3: Use the H1 tag on the title/heading of your page. | | | | Another tool is the Overture suggestion tool which |
| A H1 tag is the heading text tag in HTML. SE's give | | | | will list the number of times a word or phrase has |
| this tag more relevancy as it's generally used around | | | | been searched for on the Overture engine over the |
| the title of a page eg <h1>best exercise | | | | previous month. A handy tool that will query |
| equipment</>best exercise equipmentbut as | | | | Overture directly from your desktop and store all |
| you can see it looks pretty ugly and much to chunky | | | | results of your keyword searches is Good Keywords. |
| for a nice looking site. | | | | For a more extensive list of keyword resources try |
| So here's a little known trick you can use to keep | | | | my keyword research page. |
| the H1 tag but have the text appear as normal. | | | | 5: Body text Keyword/Keyphrases and bold text. |
| *whisper use css style sheets to shrink the text | | | | This is very much where the focus has switched |
| back to size. The text will have a large invisible | | | | when it comes to keywords and keyphrases. |
| border around it essentially taking up the same space | | | | Generally it makes sense the more focused your |
| on the page as if it hadn't been styled but you can | | | | body text is on what your site is about the better |
| get around this with a clever layout. Check the title | | | | you will get listed. In those terms everyone's a |
| of this page '10 ways to Optimise your site' that's a | | | | winner. You get better listing and your content is |
| H1 tag that's been fixed. Big difference isn't there. | | | | more relevant in order to achieve that. Does that |
| This is a little known but very useful secret. ;-) | | | | make sense ? let me clarify. |
| Here's the code to do the trick, place it in the head | | | | Returning to our examples again our site is called |
| tags of your page - | | | | We've already used the phrase 'exercise equipment' |
| <style type="text/css"> | | | | in our domain name, page title, body text title and in |
| <!--h1 {font-size: 13px;} | | | | our meta tags. |
| --> | | | | If we now add this same phrase to the main text of |
| </style> | | | | our page a number of times ideally near the top |
| Its that simple, play around with the font-size until its | | | | within the first paragraph we'll boost our ranking in |
| in proportion to the rest of your page. | | | | the SE's yet again. |
| Remember it's the title of your page and should | | | | Note you should try to make the phrase fit the text |
| stand out a little from the rest of the text. | | | | and not just cram it in there. It's also important not |
| 4: Meta tags are still useful. Choosing keywords. | | | | to over do it. As it is with the other techniques |
| Not as important as they once were due to abuse. | | | | described in this article. You can get your site |
| But still used by a number of well known search | | | | dropped and even barred from the SE's if it's seen to |
| engines. But not at all by others. Which means its still | | | | be 'spamming' them by abusing these techniques. So |
| important to use them to cover all your bases. | | | | tread carefully and try not to over do it. |
| Essentially the meta tags you should be using when | | | | Back to the keywords/keyphrases, there's a further |
| targeting the search engines are keywords, | | | | twist to this if we also make the body text 'exercise |
| description and robots. There are a number of others | | | | equipment' bold we'll score again in the SE's since text |
| I'll touch on in a second. | | | | in bold is seen as being more important and again |
| Keywords should also contain keyphrases and list all | | | | more relevant. ;-) The side benefit is that it breaks |
| the keywords/keyphrases relevant to your site. | | | | up the text a little for our site visitors and makes the |
| There are two ways to list your keywords | | | | page a little more interesting. |
| keyphrases. Either with commas separating them or | | | | |