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Definition Search Engine Optimization:
The process of designing, building, and maintaining (tweaking) a website with the objective of placing well on search engine result pages (SERPS) for preferred keywords and phrases.
The First Step to Effective Search Engine Optimization for your Website.
Search Engine Optimization Article #1:
What is the first step to optimizing your website for searchengines?
The first step towards exceptional optimization of your site for searchengines should take place ideally during the initial strategic development of the website; at the very beginning, during the conceptual stages; it's having a plan.
Having a clear strategic plan for your website is the first and most important step towards successful search engine optimization of your site.
It takes a lot of work and can be very time consuming to come up with a good strategic plan for your website but it can't be over stressed you should have a first-class, comprehensive, sound plan on paper before anything; before you purchase a domain name or start any construction on the site.
How you start the project is absolutely, positively critical to the ultimate success of the project.
When you are developing the plan start broad and work towards the more detailed plan; brainstorming is good, consult with professionals and specialists. There are many questions that need to be answered, decisions that must be made and research that must be done to come up with an all-inclusive plan for your website.
The first questions you should try to answer are do you really want a website and why? Having answered those questions you need to decide exactly what you want your website to do, defining your sites purpose. Here is a quick list of some other considerations for your site plan:
- the target audiences
- your market
- the competition
- your budget
- what to out-source
- what to do in-house and who does it
- setting time lines and deliverables
- functional requirements of the website
- an application flowchart
- website marketing
Notice that no mention of search engine optimization is made in this list of planning considerations; that's because it comes after you have the plan. Among the things you should get from all your research and planning during the web development process is a through understanding of who your target audiences are and how they will use search engines to locate your website, and if you don't have a complete familiarity with the workings of search engines, optimization is something you should definitely outsource. If you outsource your website construction make sure that your web designer is an optimization expert or has a search engine optimization specialist on his design team.
So what is the next step after your plan is finished? Developing a "Killer Keyword List"; defining and discovering the keywords and phrases that your target ordinance will use to reach your site.
Once you have developed your keywords and phrases list you will be ready to make the big decision, your domain name. It's ideal although not paramount that your domain name utilizes your most important keywords and/or phrases.
After your purchase you domain names it is ok to put up an under construction page; let Google, MSN, Yahoo, Ask.com, all the other search engines and the internet know your there and what you are doing. Don't submit your site to any search engines yet but get a link from anywhere so that they can find you and start placing you in the index. Use your keywords and phrases and it is also ok to add to or change the construction page if it takes a while for your under construction site to "go live".
Take this site for instance this website a pre-production page could the whole internet world that I am right here and I am building a site for a website design company with a search engine optimization specialist. It can be important to get into the index as soon as possible because if you are shooting for some keywords or phrases that have heavy competition like, website design company and search engine optimization specialist if it is possible to get into top SERP's (search engine results pages) at all it is going to take time. There are also other things you can do if you find yourself blocked by competition for specific keywords and key phrases but this is just the basic article about the first steps to good search engine optimization.
CORNERSTONES OF A FIRST-CLASS AND WELL OPTIMISED WEBSITE
Websites have different objectives. Some are content-driven; others provide an online service and have sophisticated user interfaces; still others still are designed to entertain and amuse their visitors. But regardless what your website is designed to do, there are three primary objectives you should keep in mind before you start building.
Website objective #1, FOCUS: Your website needs to have a narrow and specific focus because there are millions of websites on the internet and your new visitors will only take a few seconds to decide whether they'll stick around or go on to another website. It is best if within your new visitors few seconds , your site communicates exactly what it's designed to do so the visitor can decide if it meets his or her needs or not.
When developing your website of the best ways to define the focus of your site is to establish a 15 to 25 word positioning statement that guides all your development activity going forward. Consider this your websites "mission statement". This website mission statement should express exactly what your website does in just 15 to 25 words.
Once you've established a positioning statement, you should display it prominently on your homepage and use it in your meta tags as your site description then the search engines know exactly what your site is about too; if your site shows up in a search results page, that description will likely show up as part of your listing.
Website objective #2, DEPTH: Build a massive amount of content all about your narrow business focus; if a new visitor lands on your website and decides in the first few seconds that they need what you're providing, they'll go on to find a ton of resources all about that topic, satisfying their need and developing trust along the way.
Depth of content at your website will please your visitors and the search engines as well. Google uses complicated algorithms to assess value to different websites and one of the biggest things they look for is content. If your website has a narrow focus and lots of content about that focus, it will get ranked higher within your area of expertise.
Website objective #3, make your site STICKY: A websites stickiness is the website's ability to keep a visitor on the site. Many websites do a reasonably good job of attracting visitors but many of those visitors take one look at the site and leave within a second or two. Your positioning statement can do a lot to help someone understand what your site is designed to do. But you need more than that to keep them browsing.
The visitor needs to see immediate value when they visit your site. They need to see something that will benefit them right away. They need to see something they can use, they want to see the value of your site; they want proof that you can deliver. They want to sample your product or service before they buy anything.
Spend some time and think about what you can offer your website visitors as soon as they land on your site. It could be relevant information or could be a tool or it could be a free subscription. It could also be an entertaining video or an interactive game they can play. Whatever it is, you need to capture your visitor within seconds and guide them through things that will benefit them.
Once they've received one piece of value, give them a second and then a third. Guide them through a network of value, encouraging them to continue browsing and discovering even more. This is the key to a sticky website and you can get a good idea of your progress by measuring your average time on the site through your analytics platform.
Every website old or new can benefit by integrating more focus, depth and stickiness. All three improve your website' effectiveness and all three offer benefits with the search engines as well.
Choosing Good File Names for your Web Pages;
Article #2:
Your web page can score high with the search engines (SEs) with out having that keyword in the file name of that web page; a web page file name doesn't have to contain any of the pages keywords or phrases; you can have a web page with the file name of BlackDevilsFromHell.html and still get in the top SERPs for the search " (search engine results pages) white angels from heaven" so having your web page file name include your target keywords and or phrases is not essential to scoring high on the search engines for those keywords and phrases. So are your web page file names important and what are some of the rules and considerations for choosing good file names for your web pages?
Yes, the file names that you give your web pages are very important; although they may only represent a very small percentage of the search engine relevancy algorithm it all adds up and the file name is also seen by search engine spiders on other linked pages and the right file name can affect traffic in other ways too. The right file names can easily edge you up on the SERPs; having your page appear in the results of the first search engine results page as apposed to the second can represent a lot more traffic. People doing the searches have several things on the SERPs to help them make the decision on which result to click on; a piece of the Title of your page, a snippet of the description or from the text on your page, and last but often considered by searchers appears the URL or file name of the web page.
The Do and Don'ts of Web Page File Naming:
When you are choosing the best file names for your web pages there are many things to consider and many questions that arise like; are you renaming an old web page or constructing a new one, or is it best to separate the words in the file name with hyphens or underscores and what about spaces?
Renaming an established web page:
First thing to remember is to build a 301 redirect from the old file name to the new file name for a seamless transition so you don't loose any perspective visitors.
Use the web pages target keywords:
The ideal file name for a web page should be descriptive and employ the pages most important keywords. This will help you rank higher for those keywords and make you more likely to be clicked on when the page appears in the SERPs by people searching those keywords.
Word Separations in File Names:
Do separate the words in your web page file names with hyphens. People can pick words and phrases from a string of letters and so can some searchengines but at this time it is still best to separate the words in a web page file name with hyphens; big-blue-widgets.html is best not bigbluewidgets.html or BigBlueWidgets.html. Underscores in web page file names are not good they can appear as spaces on text anchors and spaces are no good either some operating systems still have trouble dealing with spaces in file names.
Capital Letters and miscellaneous punctuation in Web Page File Names:
It is best to avoid using capital letters in file names. Windows does not differentiate between BigBlueWidgets.html and bigbluewidgets.html but some popular operating systems like Linux do; using capital letters could create broken links for some users. It is best to confine your filenames to the lowercase alphabet and numerals, avoid any punctuation or special characters.
Poor Web Page Designers and CMS (Content Management Systems) can produce bad web file names for you but don't let them! Your Meta Title, Description and Web Page File Names should all be harmonious and support each other. They should be keyword-rich and clearly reflect the content on the page to both the reader and to search engine spiders. If you outsource your website design an optimized web page will cost you about twice as much but in the long run it is the best option, what is the point of having a web site if nobody can find you; work with your website designers and let them know that you want fully search engine optimized development and construction. If you are doing your own website construction in-house then don't except second rate meaningless default file names produced through CMS and Prevent your session IDs from being added to pages served to search engine spiders, every time they visit, they get a different URL for the same page this will result duplicate content indexing that can get your site removed from the SE indexes!
Content is KING, or is it?
SEO Article #3:
It has often been said of websites that Content is King and it is so very true and from some perspectives it always will be but additionally I would like to say that it naturally follows that "Optimization, SEO must be Queen". Search engine optimization is all about getting targeted traffic to your website but great optimization resulting heavy traffic doesn't mean zilch if you don't have good content when your visitors get there; if you don't have what they are looking for they simply and maybe swiftly go somewhere else.
I think that it is actually design that is King. The truth is it takes new visitors (which is what you will get most often form SERPS) seconds or only fractions of seconds to decide if you have whatever it is they are looking for. If your website isn't pretty or is unprofessional looking (like this one) he's probably gone like a rocket (are you there?). When I say design I am not talking about just aesthetics, I mean a website that works, a website with clear easy to use navigation.
So to wrap it up, you want good content for your customer (yes it's King), good optimization will get your traffic there but you must have great design or your perspective "customer" will be gone before he gets to the content you worked so hard to get and all those hours of optimization (or $$$ if you hired a professional) are wasted.
I hope you learned something from this, my second SEO article, if so come back soon I will be writing more.
I am always increasing the quality content for my humor website so if you are looking for fun and funny content, look at crazywebsite.com, I scour the web for the world's funniest stuff and I put it there, often (I also put funny hilarious amusing comical comic entertaining witty crazy weird odd unusual bizarre interesting amazing astonishing astounding remarkable incredible marvelous spectacular fascinating intriguing captivating mesmerizing strange peculiar wacky curious abnormal unusual humour humor wacky stuff from out of this world there too). Have big fun and a laugh or two, go look now!
SEO Article #4 Keyword Strategies, Long Tail Key words:
Can Search Engine Optimization or Search Engine Marketing of Long Tail Keywords Help Draw Visitors and Convert Viewers At Your Website?
Most typical search engine optimization for websites and web pages focuses on the top 10 or 20 keywords and or a few key phrases but a new approach to SEO is recently becoming more popular which involves the focus on the lesser popular long tail keywords.
So what are long tail keywords? Fundamentally, the long tail keywords are the hundreds to thousands of keywords and key phrases that a site is sometimes found yet rarely noticed or exploited that lay below the most popular 10 or 20 terms. Say for instance a web site or page has a keyword list of 50,000 words that have been used from searchers to access the site or page, there is a lengthy list starting from most used of 49,980 words used by searchers for access which follows the top 20 keywords, hence, long-tail keywords.
Most search engine optimization specialists tend to focus on the visitors that come to the site for the most popular terms. Most website owners or managers are satisfied to see these numbers increase for those specific terms, and even happier to see those terms consistently ranking well. Conventional thinking applies the 80-20 rule that the top terms provide 80% of the business, but in evaluating some sites and individual web pages the exact opposite may be found.
The principle of the Long Tail Optimization is the opposite of focusing on the top 10-20 keywords for marketing their sites. If your optimization work focuses on the top 10-20 terms you may be missing the majority of your potential visitors and customers. Maybe your top keywords and phrases are in highly competitive areas where it is impossible to get to the top of the SERPs, then you would definitely profit from development of the long-tail keywords where the is likely less competition, or maybe you rank well for your chosen top keywords but you are still missing the majority of potential traffic because your long-tail keywords optimization has been ignored; either way your long-tail keywords are worth a look and some consideration. Your tracking software should tell you what the keywords are for each page and for the site overall, you should have a look at all those possibly thousands of long-tail keywords are for your site.
Summer 2007 Website and Web Page Design, Construction and SEO:
I started in the spring and continued through summer adding content, rebuilding and tweaking the optimization for all my Central California Regional Tourism Websites:
"Ragged Point Inn Ocean View Resort" a website all about Ragged Point California, visitor information about the Ragged Point Inn Ocean View Resort and things to do near there and places to see too.
"Hearst Castle Hotels, San Simeon Lodging" a Visitor Information Website for the Hearst Castle San Simeon California area; a complete directory of all the places for tourist visitors to stay, interesting things to do and wonderful places to see near Hearst Castle San Simeon California. -and-
"Big Sur California Lodging" a Visitor Information Website for the Big Sur California coastal area; a complete directory of all the places for tourist visitors to stay near Big Sur CA; interesting things to do and wonderful places to see on the Big Sur California .
Mostly the websites received optimization tune-ups, what I like to call "SEO tweaking" the only formidable project worked on this summer was a new Information and Photo Gallery. In spite of the fact that the California Central Coast had its worst rainfall season in 30 years and most of the Big Sur Waterfalls are no more than a slight trickle or mossy streak at this time I built a
Gallery of Big Sur California Waterfalls that includes many photos of all the Big Sur CA Waterfalls and information about all the Big Sur Waterfalls and associated trails and hikes. This project began when I started to optimize the page for the
highest waterfall on the Big Sur Coast Black Swift Falls
located at Ragged Point. The design is not complete on most of the pages but all the waterfall information is there and hopefully the rainy season will begin early and be a long and plentiful one; not to much or all at once though, thank you Jesus.
Web Site Pages and Website Projects Completed June 2007
Added a new photo gallery to the wedding section of raggedpoint.us, Wedding Reception Decorations Example Ideas Photo Gallery:
New Wedding Reception Decorations Photo Gallery:
Reception Table Decoration Ideas Example Pictures, Wedding Ceremony Floral Decorations Idea Photos,
Flowers, Cakes, Reception Party Favors and more...
Wedding reception decorations photos: Need ideas for the perfect wedding ceremony flowers and wedding reception decorations? Browse the pictures in this Wedding Reception Decorations Ideas Photo Gallery; wedding table flower centerpieces, flower wedding cake decorations, wedding arch decorations, theme wedding and reception party favors and more ideas for wedding reception decorations.
Added a new web page to the wedding section of raggedpoint.us, Free Wedding Speeches, Poetry and Toasts Resource Page:
Wedding Speeches, Poetry and Toasts Resource Page;
free wedding speech examples, poetry samples, free toasts and best Bible verses for wedding ceremonies. Free wedding speeches, poetry, famous quotes, and wedding toasts tips and information for fathers of the bride and groom, best man and others who give speeches at wedding receptions. online wedding speech examples and info, wedding poetry, wedding toasts, wedding quotes and links for free wedding speeches online for wedding receptions. Write the best wedding speech using free online examples or find someone online to write a wedding speech for you!
Updated the Wedding Page, and Map Pages of raggedpoint.us:
Ragged Point Inn and Resort Ocean View Wedding Location
Ocean View Wedding Location; best wedding ceremony location, wedding reception venue, and honeymoon spot for Big Sur or San Simeon. Ragged Point Inn and Resort offers the unsurpassed beauty and scenic views of Big Sur Coast wedding locations plus the support of a full service wedding department of an all inclusive resort as well as access to the business and wedding professionals available from nearby San Simeon, Cambria, Cayucos, Morro Bay and San Luis Obispo. The perfect outdoor ocean view Central California Coast wedding venue, wedding reception location and honeymoon spot, the Ragged Point Inn and Resort!
Pacific Coast Highway Map Page: PCH MAP:Pacific Coast Highway 1 map from Morro Bay to Monterey Bay, shows Hearst Castle, San Simeon, Big Sur, elephant seals, Piedras Blancas Lighthouse and other Pacific Coast Highway (PCH 1) tourist attractions shown on Map of PCH 1.
Designed a custom google map of Beach Access, Hiking Trails and Tourist Attractions of interest to Ragged Point Inn and Resort vistiors:
Things to do near Ragged Point Inn and Resort; PCH 1 Big Sur Pacific Coast Highway 1 from Lucia to San Simeon California; Visitor Activities Points of Interest. Visitor things to do, and see near the Ragged Point Inn and Resort; PCH 1 from Lucia to San Simeon CA; beach access, hikes, Pacific Valley Station , places to explore, picnic, hike, Sand Dollar, Jade Cove, Piedras Blancas Motel Beach, Piedras Blancas Lighthouse and Elephant Seal Rookery, Sebastian's Store, Hearst Castle San Simeon Calif and more...
Web Site Pages and Website Projects Completed May 2007
In the spirit of doing what I say I have increased the quality and quantity of the content of two of the Central California Coast Travel Websites I maintain,
"Hearst Castle Hotels, San Simeon Lodging" , and
"Big Sur California Lodging" . The tourist summertime season is quickly approaching and all those California coast visitors need to find the best places to stay so I have increased the quality of the hotel, motel, resort lodging accommodations directories on both the
Hearst Castle, Lodging Complete Directory and
Big Sur California Lodging Complete Directory . Visitors now will find not only a simple listing for each lodging property but price ranges, so that they can compare, website links so they can get more information about each tourist establishment, reserve a room buttons so that visitors can make their hotel motel reservations online, pictures so they can see what the hotel, lodge, motel, lodge or resort looks like and more.
Work completed by ABD April 2007.
Most notable among the optimization and web page design and construction projects I finishes was the Italian Rapture Page at earthharvest.org, it was a whopper and took over 20 hours labor.
Some work completed by ABD March 2007.
More work earthharvest.org; Mostly on the Italian web pages. For Italian page 8 "False Prophets" I added the
False Prophets of Mammon article with associated graphics and links.
Some website design and Construction by ABD February 2007.
Working for the lord is always a joy; I completed the Farsi translation Page 9
"God As An Artist" for earthharvest.org; I completed several other pages for this website including the
Farsi Table of Contents Page. It is with great hopes and prayers that these web pages help get the word to some of those folks who speak Persian, especially in Iran.
Projects in Production January 2007
There hasn't been much work going on here at ABD's Website Design Studio because I have been having too much fun in other places. As always I am putting in some web page construction time on the website that answers the question "Is there a God?" but most of November and December was spent on crazywebsite.com
; it got crazy for the holidays. Because most of my visitors are Spanish I gathered lots of
Feliz Navidad Loco Stuff and for us Gringos I gathered all the fun and funny Christmas Videos, Games, and lots of
fun Christmas Internet StuffI also put to geather a
free Christmas Clipart Gallery (Gif Animados de Navidad) and some
Christmas backgrounds (Fondos de Navidad). Then I had to do the same for
New Years and some
New Years Clipart and Ano Nuevo Clipart. The real fun began in earnest after New Years was over and I changed the personal of the website to do a special Alien Visitors and UFOs / UAPs Report. Fun Fun Fun, Busy Busy Busy...and next is
Free Valentines Day Clipart!
CrazyWebsite.Com www.crazywebsite.com -
A connection to the humorous side of the internet. Funny Web Video, Crazy Websites, Jokes, Funny Photos, youtube, Crazy Flash Websites, Free Clipart, Free Galleries, Crazy Pictures, Crazy Frog Song, Myspace Layouts.
Alien Visitors, UFOs Special Research Report
from CrazyWebsite.com -
Alien Visitors, UFOs / UAPs Special Research Report from CrazyWebsite.com; Crazy Website Your Source for Alien Visitors UFO / UAPs Online Humor and Entertainment; Watch Funny Cartoon Alien Online Crazy Videos Free Goofy Crazy Alien UFO Clipart, Alien Abduction the Flash Game and Space Games, Funny Alien Jokes, Funny Crazy Real Alien Pictures, Crazy, Weird and Wacky Crazy Out of this World Websites, and lots of FUN Surprises; topics covered: Extraterrestrials, UFOs / UAPs, Flying Saucers, Spacecraft, Alien Abductions, Alien visitors ufos, UFO Bible, cartoon Aliens dibujos clipart gratis fondos gratis Animaciones de gif, free Alien Visitor UFO clipart, free outer space galleries, free myspace layouts, web video, crazy flash websites, joke of the day, crazy pictures, crazy video websites, fun weird funny websites, real extraterrestrial pictures.
Free Valentines Day Clipart from crazywebsite.com
Silly Goofy Crazy Funny and Free Valentines Day Clipart, Stupid Cupid, Crazy Hearts,Funny Flowers.
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