Image by Getty Images via Daylife
Podcasting is the new buzz of the internet. A Podcast is an mp3 or mp4 file of your post article that may or may not include video. Most of them are just audio files that you can listen to on the web or download for later listening.
Podcasting can [...]
For the new blogger or web entrepreneur, all this talk of SEO has to be bewildering. If you’re like me, you are reluctant to expose just how ignorant you are of this paramount subject, so just kind of sit back and keep your eyes and ears open until the light dawns. Well, here you go people - I shine the light of knowledge on just what SEO is and why YOU want it.
First, the basics — SEO stands for search engine optimization. But I can hear you saying “Um, OK, but I still don’t know what that means, and just what does that entail?” and “why do I want it?”
Search engines are the central nervous system of the web. They carry information about who’s who and what’s what from browser to browser. You type into your search window at Google, Yahoo Search, MSN, Ask Jeeves, Dogpile (or pick your favorite) the words or phrases for things you want to look up on the web. A page is returned with a list of websites and blogs that pertain to what you’re looking for.
These pages are indexed by the search engine algorithms to return only those pages most relevant to your search and in order of most-to-least relevant based on those algorithms.
You want to be listed in these results so that you get visitors, customers or subscribers depending upon what your website is about. So optimizing your website or blog for search engine inclusion is what SEO means and what you want to do unless you don’t WANT people to find your website. And if that’s the case, you can stop reading now and move on.
In order to see just how the pieces of SEO work, let’s pretend we’re creating a webpage that’s going to sell widgets to people to use on their blogs and websites.
It’s a good idea to see what the “competition” does with their webpage and how they come up in the search engines, so let’s give Google a spin to see what comes up now for our chosen “product”.
We’ll use “magic widgets” for our search term because that’s a term we’ve heard our customers use a lot.
What comes up is this:
See, even though the exact term “magic widgets” isn’t in the first result title or even the description underneath the title, the website owner has so optimized his page for this particular search term that it comes up before the one that DOES include the term in it’s title!
How did he do that?
Well he did a number of things. All of them are things you can do too and here’s how.
He’s done a search on keyword and keyword phrases which you can do also using Google’s Keyword Tool or one of the other keyword tools available on the web (free ones!), he’s entered the word “widget” and seen the results of that. He’s then used those most relevant key words and phrases on his site in various ways.
One of the ways he’s used them is with the meta tags on the pages on his site. Meta tags are little snippets of code that help tell the robots (or bots) sent out by the search engines what the page is about and what kinds of things it should find there. Many web tutorials are leaving off meta tags stating the bots no longer look at these, but my evidence points otherwise. While the search engines may not return entirely your meta description or return searches from your meta tags and meta keywords, they do look at them and then plumb the depths of your pages looking for matches. Having those matches on the page confirms to the bot that your page is for real and it goes on to use these and other factors such as back-links, keyword density and page reads to determine your rank or authority.
Meta tags include:
Meta Robots: This tag enjoys full support, but you only need it if you DO NOT want your pages indexed.
Meta Description: This tag enjoys much support, and it is well worth using.
Meta Keywords: This tag lists your main keywords and keyword phrases. if your site is not a niche site (i.e. the bots aren’t going to find much mention of these keywords on your pages), it’s probably not worth your time to implement.
To implement the Meta Description tag, between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags of your index page you will want to put the following:
<META Name=”description” content=”Everything you ever wanted to know about magic widgets from coding them to implementation”>
Meta Keywords should be limited to twenty-five words or phrases. To implement the Meta Keywords tag, again, between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags of your web page, you will put the following (but use your own results of your keyword search):
<META Name =”keywords” content=”magic widgets, widgets, superior widgets, website widgets”>
And to implement the Meta Robots tag, still between <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags of your web page, put the following ONLY IF YOU DO NOT WANT THIS PAGE INDEXED BY THE ROBOTS.
<META Name=”robots” content=”noindex”>
You would do this on pages such as your about page as an example. While this method of excluding robots is effective a far better way of telling them to keep off is to use a robots.txt file in the root of your website. This will list the pages you don’t want indexed and is far easier to keep up with than individual pages and tags.
Putting keywords into meta tags isn’t the only use of them. You should also be using your keywords within the articles and text you have on your site. Having them sprinkled liberally throughout your article will alert the robots that your page is indeed very relevant to those terms, thereby giving your site a higher “score” and move it up in the ranks of sites to return when those particular terms are employed.
Besides having keywords, your site should also employ links to other sites. Having links and being linked to give you “authority” in the eyes of the search engines. That being said, you don’t want to have too many links as that kicks in a negative side in the search engine algorithms.Remember, this is about OPTIMIZING for search engine results. More is not always better young Jedi.
There are two “types” of links that you can use: “dofollow” and “nofollow”. These work a lot like the robots meta tag exept they only apply to that particular link. Your USERS will always be able to click the links you provide and be whisked away to whatever website you’re sending them to further instruction or to see the source of your information, so what you’re really doing with those tags which you will be putting in the link itself is telling the robots if they should also follow the link or not. Including these tags either pass along “link love” or withhold it. Sending someone to Wikipedia for more information on a particular subject might be a “nofollow” link, but sending them to Turnipofpower.com, a recognized expert in SEO and social networking would definitely qualify for “dofollow”. To set these, when you set up your link, to make it a dofollow you really don’t have to do anything, to make it nofollow you would do it like this:
<a href=”http://www.wikipedia.com rel=”nofollow”>Wikipedia</a>
If you’re a blogger, there are plug-ins you can use that will convert all your tags one way or the other or allow you to set some dofollow and others nofollow. Speaking of Turnip, he has a mini-tutorial on doing just that over at his site, so do pop over there to read up on dofollow versus nofollow and how to set up your site to use them properly.
There is a boat load more to learn about SEO and this article has already gone on long enough, so we’ll stop here for today. I’ll go into more things in a later article that will include using images for SEO and how to find and use articles on the web to improve your rankings.
ê¿ê
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=af479e5d-6bd1-4b24-aaaf-e4b85e67fb47)
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Tags: keywords, Meta element, SEO, SEO
Post here
November 6th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
This was very useful to me. Pitched just right for my level of understanding. Thanks.
Ken Armstrong´s last blog post..Quantum of So-So
November 7th, 2008 at 7:57 am
Great overview on SEO. I would never call myself an expert on the topic as I too learn as I go, always taking advice when it makes sense. The interesting part of SEO is how it interacts with Social Networking on your blog. Obviously you can’t link to the entire internet every time you post. Authors have to carefully choose who and when to link to someone. So when I do see a post mentioning my site, I am very quick to stop by and check it out. Thanks!
Turnip | Social Networking´s last blog post..How To Make A Link NoFollow In WordPress
November 7th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
I do not know much about SEO as I have never really bothered. At present I blog for fun and I suppose that explains the lack of interest. I suppose I have to learn sometime because as a developer (of sorts), client’s often request that their site’s are made SEO friendly.
At the moment I am following a series on the topic on another blog I regularly read. This, along with your easy to understand tutorial can only help. Thanks for this, looking forward to the next one.
Lyndi´s last blog post..Blog Review: http://www.Rarst.net
November 8th, 2008 at 1:49 am
Great post… I’ve been contemplating making my “About” page and my “Home” page no follow, because many SEO ‘perts say if it’s not, then you get ranked for the word “Home” or “About,” but I haven’t messed with it because I don’t feel comfortable enough with these things. Maybe I will try it one of these days.
StanHayes´s last blog post..Cameron Maybin, Keeper
November 10th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
@Ken — glad to have finally written something you can understand
@Turnip — thanks! I appreciate the compliment greatly! Although I thought when you linked to Wikipedia you WERE linking to the entire internet
@Lyndi — I didn’t think I had to be too worried about it either, but I’ve found out differently.
@Stan — you would be better served to just put a robots.txt file in the root to keep them from indexing those pages. You truly don’t have much to worry about as your PR just keeps on rising!
November 10th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Hi,
How do I decide who are my competitors ? I mean if I search for my keyword, there would be thousands of websites which will come up on google, and u know the list keeps changing….
By d way, I really like your site design
can u tell me which plugin are u using for social bookmarking icons, its really great !!
Raj-ThePositiveLife´s last blog post..Kick Procrastination - Part 2
November 11th, 2008 at 4:29 am
SEO is very important part of blogging. If we have a blog with good SEOtimzation then we get very good search engine traffic.
I have almost 60-70% of search engine traffic monthly. But the problem for my blog is not many bloggers link to my posts (very few backlinks).
Nihar´s last blog post..October 2008 Blog Traffic & Income statistics
November 11th, 2008 at 5:44 am
@raj - you may have to narrow your keywords down or expand the phrases. That’s why you do the keyword search first. You see what phrases are getting the most “hits”, settle on a few of those that best fit your niche, then look at the top 3 sites that come up for those keywords and see what they have done.
@Nihar — Just looking at what CommentLuv pulled in as your last post tells me that your blog is about marketing on the web. If that’s NOT what your blog is about then why would you write a post about traffic and income statistics? Are your readers really and truly interested in these facts? Could you not incorporate them in a post that has less to do with the presentation of your site stats and more to do with how you achieved them? Which would interest YOU more if you were looking through comment links? The A-List bloggers made their mark in the world not by presenting posts of site statistics I can assure you.
November 11th, 2008 at 6:10 am
Hi,
Thanks for your answer, got your point, will surely implement it.
Can u pls tell me which wordpress plugin u r using for your footer social bookmarking, its very cute.
Thanks in advance
Raj-ThePositiveLife´s last blog post..Kick Procrastination - Part 2
November 11th, 2008 at 6:18 am
@raj — I’m using Sociofluid as my social bookmarking images. I wish they were just a bit larger, but this was the largest size you could choose. From just now looking at the website, I see it’s also available for Blogger. NICE!
November 11th, 2008 at 7:17 am
he he
got it, its sociofluid, I am an I.T. Engineer
Raj-ThePositiveLife´s last blog post..Kick Procrastination - Part 2
November 11th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
@raj — I did reply to your question, honest, but the system must have eaten it. Yes, it’s sociofluid.
November 11th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Lots of info! Still a bit much for me in my early stage of blogging. I think that once I’ve been at this a little while longer and come back and read it again, it’ll make more sense. Thank you for all the great information. I’m new to blogging so all the terms are new to me. Someone asked me where my RSS was and I had no clue what it was or where it was….
Tamika
Tamika´s last blog post..Over or Under
November 12th, 2008 at 2:58 am
Thank you so so much! This is just what I’ve been looking for. I am not too proud to say all this seo, backlink, trackback mumbo jumbo has had me frazzled. I am slowly but surely absorbing it all. I had no idea blogging would be so technical, but it is great fun learning something new. (even if I did have to read your article three times to get it!)
Thanks so much and I look forward to reading more!
Monica
Monica´s last blog post..Houseplants Equal Cleaner Air and Some Other Interesting Facts…
November 12th, 2008 at 9:33 am
@Tamika — take your time — SEO is a huge subject that tends to change often if not daily. It has direct effect on your blog’s performance with regards to internet searches, monetization and readership, so do try to pick up some of it and begin incorporating it as you compose your blog posts.
@Monica — thank you. I tried really hard to make SEO simple to understand but there is a lot to it which is why I decided to break it up into smaller pieces. This one piece alone is a pretty big one and may have been too big. I’ll definitely try to keep the subsequent ones at a bit more bite-sized
ê¿ê
November 29th, 2008 at 2:42 am
This is a fantastic rundown on the bare basics of what SEO actually is. I’ve picked up some SEO hints and tips along the way in my two years blogging online but am still in a quandary when it comes to results.
I’m about to read onto your other SEO entries but the biggest question I still have is, “What exactly are we looking for with keyword research?”
If we search a specific keyword of phrase we see it the mass based on search density and compare with similar keywords or keyword phrases. How do we use this information? Should we be shooting for the highest hitting results knowing that the competition on those words are also higher? Or dig deeper to find results that have moderate hits but are less competitive? Or do we mix in the range of keywords to create a wider net?
Obviously, there is still so much to learn. I’m reading on eagerly.
Rebecca Laffar-Smith´s last blog post..Bloggers And The Wall: Breaking Through Barriers