Search Engine Optimization Secrets
Transcription
Search Engine Optimization Secrets
Search Engine Optimization Secrets © Ewisoft Co. E-mail: [email protected] Second Edition Table of Contents Search Engine Optimization Secrets....................................................................... 3 Title Tags Should Contain Specific Keyword Phrases ................................................... 5 Compelling headlines to improve your search engine ranking....................................... 6 The Body Text of the Page Should Contain Information-Rich Content ............................ 7 Using Descriptive File Names .................................................................................. 8 Get other people to link to your website - Inbound links.............................................. 9 Using Descriptive Image ALT tags.......................................................................... 10 Keywords Meta Tags Not Really Supported Anymore ................................................ 11 How to Optimize Your Website............................................................................. 12 Input Title Tags .................................................................................................. 12 Apply a Heading Tag............................................................................................ 13 Use a Descriptive File Name.................................................................................. 14 Add ALT tag text to images................................................................................... 15 Insert Keywords Meta tags ................................................................................... 16 How Google Works ............................................................................................... 18 How Can I Improve My Website Ranking? ............................................................... 20 Google Sitemaps ................................................................................................. 20 How to Properly Submit to Search Engines .......................................................... 22 Submit to DMOZ - Open Directory Project ............................................................... 23 Submit to Google ................................................................................................ 23 Submit to Yahoo ................................................................................................. 24 Research and Analysis Tools ................................................................................ 26 Keyword Suggestion Tools .................................................................................... 26 SEO Tools for the Beginner User............................................................................ 28 SEO Tools for the Advanced User........................................................................... 29 Search Engine Optimization Secrets Those days are gone when you could just build a new website, upload it to the Internet and submit it to a few popular search engines and get traffic easily by using some keywords. Getting listed well in search engines is not as easy as it used to be. Sure, there are those companies that will charge you a small fortune to get you listed at the top but there are common sense things you can do for search engine optimization that can help you get a good start. Definition: Search engine optimization is the process of preparing your website so that search engines can better understand its content and/or purpose. The search engine counts the words on the page and ranks them according to their occurrence. Once it has that it then further scores those words based upon how “prominent” they were on the page. The objective of search engine optimization is to increase visitors by getting your website to rank very high in search results by using the most appropriate keywords that describe the content of your website. Search engines are a very important source of traffic because everyone uses them. Search engines rank websites based on these factors: • • • • • • • Title tags should contain specific keyword phrases Compelling headlines will improve your search engine ranking The body text of the page should contain information-rich content Using descriptive file names Get other people to link to your website Using descriptive image ALT tags Keywords meta tags not really supported anymore As you go through this eBook and build your website using Ewisoft Website Builder and follow these techniques, you will become successful in getting a great ranking for your website. Learn all the search engine optimization techniques to ensure a good ranking. 3 Here is an example of a successfully optimized page for the keyword phrase "Computer Maintenance Package": This page comes up Number 1 most times on a Google search for "computer maintenance package" 4 Title Tags Should Contain Specific Keyword Phrases Overview The title tag is the most important element on the page. It is the first element the search engine spider encounters and serves as the headline of a page. Importance Critical All search engines use title tags to gather information about your website. The words in the title tag are what appear in the clickable link on the search engine results page. What you put in this tag is a key factor in which search queries you will rank highly with in the major search engines. Title tags are definitely one of the "big three" as far as the algorithmic weight given to them; they are equally as important as your visible text copy and the links pointing to your pages. Here is a scenario: As a New York Web Designer, you would want your company's site to appear in the search engine results for searches on phrases such as "New York Web Design". You would need to be even more specific if you prefer to work for people only in the Syracuse area. In that case, use keywords such as "Syracuse Web Design" in your site's title tags. This is a key point: If you're only seeking customers or clients in a specific geographical region, your keywords need to reflect that. People looking for a web designer in Syracuse may begin their search by simply entering "Web Design" in the search engine but find that it displays too many results. So, they will narrow the search by adding "Syracuse" to their search terms. When they do, you want your site to be right there on the first page of new results. In the Syracuse Web Designer example, you might create a title tag as follows: Your Company Name - Web Design in Syracuse However, there's more than enough space in the title tag to include both of these important keyword phrases. (In fact, search engines will display 60 to 115 characters of your title tag.) Here's an example of an approach that's even better: Your Company Name - Web Design in Syracuse - Low cost startup website packages Click here to learn how to Input Title Tags using Ewisoft Website Builder. 5 Compelling headlines to improve your search engine ranking Overview Headlines are simple and concise descriptions of the page that immediately focus the user's attention similar to the headline of a newspaper article. Accordingly, they are given significant weight by the search engines due to its prominence on the page. Importance Critical The headlines are more important than the regular body copy for both your human readers and for the search engines. Always include your keywords in the heading tags, preferably as the first words of the heading. By writing headlines that actually appeal to human beings, while also improving your search engine ranking, you can greatly improve the quality of visitors at your website. Search engines actively seek out the headings in your content. By using heading tags, you give the search engine something to focus on by telling them what your page is about. Here are some ideas to create a headline and attract the right kind of visitor to your website and increase your search engine ranking. We will include "Web Design" as part of our targeted keywords in these example headlines. Pose a question rather than a statement: These examples are aimed at 3 different target markets. 1. Are you having difficulty finding Web Design? (This is targeting visitors who can't find it) 2. Do you need high quality Web Design? (This is targeting visitors looking for good quality) 3. Are you looking for reasonably priced Web Design? (This is targeting visitors looking for good prices) 6 Pose a problem rather than a solution: These examples are focusing more on the visitor's problem but still including the keyword phrase "Web Design" as the most prominent words for the search engines. 1. Are you tired of wasting your time looking for professional Web Design? (Time is the problem) 2. Is your past Web Design not up to standards? (Poor quality is the problem) 3. Have you been paying a lot of money for Web Design? (Price is the problem) Pose a curious question: These examples are to get the reader hooked into reading about your offer and still including the keyword phrase "Web Design". 1. Want to know 5 simple ways to save time finding professional Web Design? 2. Is your Web Design supplier playing these tricks on you? 3. Paying through the nose for Web Design? 3 things to look out for... Apply these methods to write powerful, targeted headlines to improve your search engine ranking for your target keyword phrases. Click here to learn how to Apply a Heading Tag in Ewisoft Website Builder. The Body Text of the Page Should Contain Information-Rich Content Overview The first sentence of the page should be a brief statement of a specific call to action and/or purpose of the page. This sentence is like the opening sentence of an article and sets the theme for the page. Many search engines pull the first full sentence that “wraps” the first occurrence of the keyword phrase. Importance Critical Here are some general rules of writing the body of the page • Keep your content focused to a single theme per page. Focus on one specific keyword phrase. Blend in common synonyms for your keyword and some general keywords to cover multi-word searches. Not too much, though, or you will dilute your most important keywords. 7 • Include content on each page, not just graphics and links. Search engines index by content and desperately need words. Pages that are less graphical and more text oriented have better search engine rankings. • Never place the same keywords directly beside each other. A search engine will think you're trying to spam it and you will get a lower ranking. Use your keywords at the start, middle, and end of your content. This will emphasize an overall theme on your web page and will give you a better search engine ranking. Use your keywords more frequently in the opening two paragraphs, and also in the closing paragraph. The first 200 words of the body copy tell the story about the page and is the most important part of the body copy to the search engine. Search engines prefer pages with an overall “body” word count of between 300 – 500 words. Some engines don't use the META Description tag in their search results. They will usually use the first few lines of text in the body of your page and display them as the description, so make sure these lines are attractive to humans. Using Descriptive File Names Overview Ensure that the filenames being used in your site are well named and relevant to the site. Because many search engine index file names, it is very important that these are created using relevant keywords. Importance Very Try to make your file names descriptive and use targeted keywords whenever possible. Use search engine friendly, human readable file name or URLs. This will both help your ranking and your users, so do not miss the opportunity to include your important term either in your domain name or in your file name. For example, if you have a page about Web Design, initially you might consider a page like design.htm to keep it short. Instead consider naming it to: the-most-affordable-web-design.htm. This puts your keywords directly in the file name. Click here to learn how to Use a Descriptive File Name in Ewisoft Website Builder. 8 Get other people to link to your website Inbound links Overview The number and quality of inbound links from other websites can have a significant effect on your rankings in some search engines, particularly Google with its PageRank calculation. The text of the inbound link is also important and it should preferably contain the keywords of the page being linked to for maximum impact. Importance Very In the longer term other sites will eventually link to you if your content is interesting and unique. However, actively pursuing links from other sites is an important part of the process to begin with. Most quality sites will benefit with a link from the Open Directory Project, also called DMOZ. Most search engines will list your site free but the best way to get your site indexed is through having a search engine follow a link from another site. Participate in Blogs, Weblogs and Forums leaving relevant comments that interest you and be sure to include a link to your website through your signature. This is a very effective method to get listed in search engines but do not spam them. Don't value anyone else who gives you a link from some automated linking program or web directory, unless the directory is known to be useful and have real human editors. Write a testimonial for a website or product on a website. If you have come across a website or product that you think is great, write them a testimonial. A 9 webmaster may likely post it on their website. Make sure you include your real name and website address in your signature. Contact your friends, suppliers, customers who have websites and ask them to link to your website. Do the same for them. The most valuable links will come from your suppliers and retailers, and other websites of interest to your industry sector. Write articles that contain original content. Some of the most effective articles are: tips & tricks articles, how-to articles, and news stories. Search for popular websites who may post your articles that are related to your content. A great place to start posting your website is to do a search for shopping directories where you can submit your website under a related category. The more quality websites your website is posted on, the better search engine ranking your website will get. Using Descriptive Image ALT tags Overview Image ALT tags, when used properly, add to the overall keyword count within the page. Your ALT text descriptions should be complete sentences and not a list of keywords lumped together. Importance Somewhat Image ALT text provides search engines with a "translation" of the content of the image. A search engine cannot read the text in an image. Image ALT text is presented in place of an image if the link to the image is broken or the visitor is using a text only browser. Your visitors may see it when they mouse over an image. Because it can be easily stuffed with keywords, image ALT text has been widely abused in the past. Because of this search engines don't place a whole lot of value on it but it still provides a little weight in the search engine ranking as it adds to the keyword density on your page. Including image ALT text in your web pages is a good design practice, regardless of how much it helps to improve your search engine rankings. 10 Ideally, your image ALT text descriptions should be complete sentences, rather than a list of keywords or obscure phrases. Click here to learn how to Add ALT tag text to images in Ewisoft Website Builder. Keywords Meta Tags Not Really Supported Anymore Overview The meta keywords tag is sometimes useful as a way to reinforce the terms you think a page is important for on the few search engines that support it. Importance Not important at all Far too many people new to search engine optimization obsess with the meta keywords tag. Very few search engine crawlers support it, most importantly, Google does not support it in their crawling algorithms. For those search engines that do, it may help improve the ranking of your page. It also may very well do nothing for your page at all. In fact, repeat a particular word too often in a meta keywords tag and you could actually harm your page's chances of ranking well. Because of this, we strongly suggest that those new to search engine optimization not even worry too much about the tag. The ascendancy of the tag did not last after 1997. Experience with the tag has showed it to be a spam magnet. Some website owners would insert misleading words about their pages or use excessive repetition of words in hopes of tricking the crawlers about relevancy. For this reason, Excite (which also owned WebCrawler) doesn't support the keywords meta tag. Lycos quietly dropped its support of the tag in 1998, and newer search engines such as Google and FAST never added support at all. It is most important to write pages with useful, information-rich, keyword rich content, that clearly and accurately describes your content. Click here to learn how to Insert Keywords Meta tag using Ewisoft Website Builder. 11 How to Optimize Your Website Ewisoft Website Builder software generates your website pages with Search Engine Optimization in mind. We have spent many years studying Search Engine Methodologies and Techniques and have consolidated the most important information for you to use. There are many resources on the Internet covering this subject that can become confusing and even overwhelming to understand. We have done all the hard work for you and have presented the information in plain terms. Follow these instructions when building your pages using Ewisoft Website Builder and you will be on the right path for success in the search engines: • Input Title Tags • Apply a Heading Tag • Use a Descriptive File Name • Add ALT tag text to images • Insert Keywords Meta tags Input Title Tags Here is how to input a Title Tag in Ewisoft Website Builder: 1. Right click on your page and select Properties. 12 2. In the Page Title field, enter the title of the page as you would like it to appear in the browser window title. In other words a long name for the page. 3. Below you will see how the Page Title will look in the browser window. This will apply the title tags to your page title which is ranked very high by the search engines. <title>Ewisoft Website Builder - The fastest way to create a website</title> Apply a Heading Tag Here is how to apply a Heading tag to your headline in Ewisoft Website Builder. 1. Type in your headline as the first line on your page. 13 2. Highlight the headline, click the Paragraph pulldown and select Heading 1. This will apply the heading tags to your headline which search engines put a lot of weight on. <h1>News</h1> Use a Descriptive File Name Here is how to name a filename in Ewisoft Website Builder: 1. Right click on your page and select Properties. 14 2. In the File Name field, enter the name of the page. Never use spaces or special characters in filenames. • You can use dashes or underscores to separate words. • Always use lower-case text to ensure users will be able to see the page as some servers are case-sensitive. Add ALT tag text to images Here is how to add ALT text to your images in Ewisoft Website Builder: 1. Select your image and click the Image button in the toolbar. 2. Enter a meaningful sentence that describes your image into the Alt field and click OK. 15 Insert Keywords Meta tags For those search engines that still do support the keywords meta tag, we have included a field to insert up to 250 characters in Ewisoft Website Builder. There are two options for you to add keywords into Ewisoft Website Builder. Option 1: You can enter one set of keywords and have them appear on every page in your website. or Option 2: You can enter keywords for each page in your website. Option 1: Here are instructions for entering one set of keywords to appear on every page: 1. From the Site menu, select Website Setup. 2. Click the Advanced button. 16 3. Enter your keywords and keyword phrases separated by commas and click OK. Option 2: Here are instructions for entering keywords on an individual page: 1. Right click on the page you want to add keywords to and select Properties. 2. Click the Advanced button. 17 3. Enter your keywords and keyword phrases separated by commas and click OK. How Google Works Give visitors the information they're looking for Provide high-quality content on your pages, especially your homepage. The homepage is the most important page in your website. If your pages contain useful information, their content will attract many visitors and entice other websites to link to your website. In creating a helpful, information-rich website, write pages that clearly and accurately describe your topic. Think about the words users would type to find your pages and include those words on your website. Try to get other sites link to yours Links help Google's crawlers find your website and can give your website greater visibility in their search results. When returning results for a search, Google combines PageRank (their measure of a page's importance) with sophisticated textmatching techniques to display pages that are both important and relevant to each search. Google counts the number of votes a page receives to determine its PageRank, interpreting a link from page A to page B as a vote by page A for page B. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important." Keep in mind that Google's algorithms can distinguish natural links from unnatural links. Natural links to your website will develop as part of the dynamic nature of the web when other websites find your content valuable and think it would be helpful for their visitors, they will link to your website. Here is an example of a natural link: 18 Unnatural Links: Unnatural links are when a chunk of unrelated links is placed on a page. Some of these types of links are called link schemes, link farms and doorway pages. Avoid submitting your website to these link farms. It can hurt your website and is frowned upon by Google. They may even ban your website from their search engine. This would be a grave mistake for your website. Only natural links are useful for the indexing and ranking of your site. Make your website easily accessible Build your website with a logical link structure. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link. Ewisoft Website Builder uses the navigation links (new pages) for this purpose. Site maps are also a great way of providing a link to all your pages. Things to Avoid • Don't fill your page with lists of keywords, attempt to "cloak" pages, or put up "crawler only" pages. If your website contains pages, links, or text that you don't intend visitors to see, Google considers those links and pages deceptive and may ignore your website. • Don't feel obligated to purchase a search engine optimization service. Some companies claim to "guarantee" high ranking for your site in Google's search results. While legitimate consulting firms can improve your site's flow and content, others employ deceptive tactics in an attempt to fool search engines. Be careful; if your domain is affiliated with one of these deceptive services, it could be banned from Google's index. • Don't use images to display important names, content, or links. Their crawler doesn't recognize text contained in graphics. Use image ALT tags to display what the image is about. • Don't create multiple copies of a page under different URLs. Many sites offer text-only or printer-friendly versions of pages that contain the same content as the corresponding graphic-rich pages. Click here to see How Can I Improve My Website Ranking Click here to learn about Google Sitemaps 19 How Can I Improve My Website Ranking? Some sources have said that Google is uncomfortable to rank newer websites until they have proven their viability to exist for more than a period of "x" months. All new websites have their ratings placed on hold until this period of time has passed before a ranking can start. However the website is not hindered as much as the links that are reciprocated from other users. Newer links that are created are put on a "probationary" status until again they pickup in rank from other matured sites or placed directly by an ad campaign. The idea behind the hindrance is to prevent a fast ranking to occur on a new website. The usual holding period seems to be between 90 and 120 days before a site would start obtaining rank from reciprocal or back linking. People have noticed a 0 page rank when first signing up and receiving a huge 7 page ranking after 4 months. Why the delay? The fact is, that if people realized how easy it would be to get a high ranking that would take away the credibility of the engine. It depends on whom you ask, but it does seem to be happening frequently to newer subscribers. Do not discontinue back linking, your rank will eventually appear. Websites' positions in Google's search results are determined automatically based on a number of factors: • In-bound links. PageRank™ uses its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. Which means, Google looks at a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than just that; it also looks at the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are also "important" are weighed more heavily and help to make other pages "important." • Information-rich content. Google examines all aspects of the page's content, and the content of the pages linking to it, to determine if it's a good match for your search. They combine PageRank with sophisticated textmatching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. In summary, you can improve the rank of your website by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to your website. See also Google Sitemaps Google Sitemaps Google Sitemaps is an easy way to tell Google about all the pages on your site, which pages are most important to you, and when those pages change, for a smarter crawl and fresher search results. Find out how Google sees your site Google Sitemaps also answers questions you might have about how Google sees your site. For example, you can learn about errors (such as if they're having trouble 20 crawling your pages) and statistics (such as what search queries return your site in the results). How do I add a site to my account? To add a site: 1. Sign into Google Sitemaps at https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ with your Google Account. If you don't have one, you can sign up for a free account. 2. On the My Sites page, type the site URL in the "Add site" field. Make sure you type the entire URL, such as "http://www.example.com/" 3. Click "OK." 4. The site will appear in the Site column. Click the Verify link beside the site and verify site ownership to see detailed statistics and errors for it. You will need to follow the instructions to verify your website in order to see the statistics and information from Google Sitemaps. Google Sitemap generator http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ There are many tools out on the Internet that can generate a Sitemap made for importing into Google Sitemaps. We have found the most effective and easy to use Sitemap generator below. This Google Sitemap generator tool will generate up to 500 pages for free. 21 How to Properly Submit to Search Engines Contrary to popular opinion, submitting a website every week or every month to the major search engines will not help your rankings. In fact it might hurt your website as some engines may treat it as spam. Once a website is in a search engine's database, it usually won't go away. Once your website has been optimized for all its major keywords and keyword phrases, your website should consistently drive targeted visitors to your website. You should be careful of any company or individual that claims otherwise. There are only about a dozen or so major search engines and a few good search directories that, altogether, provide about 96.5% of all Internet search engine results in the world. Most search engines will list your site free but the best way to get your site indexed is through having a search engine follow a link from another site. Participate in Blogs, Weblogs and Forums leaving relevant comments that interest you and be sure to include a link to your website through your signature. This is a very effective method to get listed in search engines but do not spam them. Follow these instructions on how to submit to the most important search engines and directories: • Submit to DMOZ - Open Directory Project • Submit to Google • Submit to Yahoo Prepare to be patient Once you have submitted your website to the search engines and directories, the best thing for you to do is wait. We suggest you wait for about 60 days. Check back with all the engines to see if you have been listed. Search Engine Relationship Chart™ Bruce Clay, Inc. is a leading provider of search engine marketing services with emphasis on search engine optimization. He has put together this amazing chart that displays how the search engines and directories work and who feeds who. Click or visit the links below to see this amazing chart: http://www.bruceclay.com/searchenginerelationshipchart.htm 22 Submit to DMOZ - Open Directory Project The most efficient way to get listed in all the major search engines is to submit your website to the DMOZ - Open Directory Project. If your site has been accepted into the Open Directory, it may take anywhere from 2 weeks to several months for your site to be listed on partner sites which use the Open Directory data, such as AltaVista - A9 - AOL - Clusty - Gigablast - Google Lycos - MSN - Teoma - WiseNut - Yahoo , and hundreds of other sites. They make updates of the data available weekly, but each partner has their own update schedule. DMOZ - Open Directory Project Submit 1. Prepare your website to make sure you have done following: • Your full contact information should be there • Double-check your website for spelling errors or typos 2. Visit here http://www.dmoz.org/ 3. Drill down into the category where you believe your website should be posted. • According to sources, you are only allowed to submit to one category. 4. At the top of the page, click suggest URL. Submission Times - Because this is volunteer-based editing and inclusion it can take up to 8 weeks (reportedly sometimes 6 or more months) to get listed in The Open Directory. Once there, it may take additional time for the listing to be used by sites using The Open Directory data. The thing to remember is that you must have suitable URL content and be engineered to beat your competition within The Open Directory before you register your pages. Just registering with The Open Directory does not assure a suitable ranking. Submit to Google Google is the number one search engine on the Internet. Getting a listing in Google should be a top priority if you wish to have a serious website presence. Google Search Engine Submit 1. Submit your website to Google by visiting here http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl 2. Fill in the information and click Add URL. 23 Google Directory Submit In addition to submitting your website to Google, you should also submit to the Google Directory. It is the largest human-edited directory on the web. It also gets spidered by all the popular search engines. 1. Go here http://directory.google.com/ 2. Drill down into the category where you believe your website should be posted. 3. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Submit a Site. 4. Fill in the form information and click the Submit button. Submission Times - Upon submitting to Google, it can take up to 3-6 weeks for your site to be listed in the index. Google will respider every page in its database approximately once every 3-6 weeks and usually publishes a major update to its index during the last week of each month. Submit to Yahoo Yahoo is the number two search engine on the Internet. Getting a listing on Yahoo can be very important too. Yahoo Search Engine Submit 1. Visit here http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html 2. Click Submit Your Site for Free 3. Log into your Yahoo account. You will need to register for a free account if you don't already have one. 24 4. Enter your website URL and click Submit URL. Yahoo Directory Submit To list your website on Yahoo Directory may not be free. It depends on which category you choose to list your website in. The free categories are the ones that are non-commercial. Yahoo now charges $299 per year to be guaranteed a spot in their listing. The difference between a non-commercial website and commercial website is if you are selling a product or service, then your website is a commercial website. If you are lucky enough to find a free non-commercial category, then submit your website to it. 1. Visit here http://dir.yahoo.com/ 2. Drill down into the category where you believe your website should be posted. 3. Click the Suggest a Site link at the top of the page 4. If you have found a non-commercial category, you will see a screen like this that offers a Standard Consideration button. If you clicked into a commercial category you will only see the $299 Yahoo Directory Submit button. 5. Follow their directions and complete the forms. 25 Submission Times - Upon submitting to Yahoo for free, it takes approximately two to six weeks to get listed in Yahoo’s directory. Research and Analysis Tools There are several tools available to you on the Internet to assist you in determining where you rank for particular phrases, what your domain Google PageRank is and how many incoming links you have. We have researched these tools and have put together a short list of the best and most effective tools out there today. • Keyword Suggestion Tools • SEO Tools for the Beginner User • SEO Tools for the Advanced User Keyword Suggestion Tools There are some great tools on the Internet that can help you choose some keyword phrases in which to build your content around. They can also give you an idea of which keywords and keyword phrases are most searched for. Overture Keyword Selector Tool http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ Overture was acquired by Yahoo in 2003 and is the leader in paid search services on the Internet. Overture tool combines singular and plural versions of a word and only can track those terms which already have ads in place. Since Overture makes money by selling ads and many automated bots search through their distribution network their results may run high (some highly competitive commercial terms are off by a factor greater than 10 times). 26 Google Suggest Tool http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en&complete=1 As you type into the search box, Google Suggest guesses what you're typing and offers suggestions in real time based by popularity. Google Keyword Sandbox https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal The Keyword Tool generates potential keywords for you and reports their Google statistics, including search performance and seasonal trends. Start your search by entering your own keyword phrases or a specific URL. 27 SEO Tools for the Beginner User These tools are great for the beginner user to see some quick statistics on your website: Ewisoft Co. - Search Engine Tools http://www.ewisoft.com/a/search-engine-tools/ This is a password protected website: Username: ewbuser Password: drivetraffic • Inbound links Backlink checker Find those backlinks linking to you, their Description, Language and Size. • Keyword density checker Find out what keywords are popular on your pages. The keywords will be shown in a visual way (cloud view). • Keyword suggestion This handy tool will display up to 10 popular keywords matching your initial keyword. • Link popularity Find how many links your domain has on the most common search engines. • Rank checker Use this online tool to see what your ranking is. Find out how popular your website is to users and search engines. Also, find out how many search engines linked to your website. • Search engine position Use this tool to check what search engine position you have for Google and Yahoo. • Spider bot view Find out how Spider bots view your website. This includes most major search bots including Google, MSN and Yahoo! • Visual PageRank View the PageRank of links visually rather than in text. • All-in-One Lookup Retrieve a number of information about a detail including age of domain, speed, Dmoz listings, Current PageRank, Predicted PageRank, Alexa Ranking, Backlinks, Listings on Google/MSN/Yahoo and Website's competition. See also SEO Tools for the Advanced User 28 SEO Tools for the Advanced User Bruce Clay, Inc. offers a wealth of very useful and important information on Search Engine Optimization. These tools are great for the advanced user to see in-depth statistics on your website. Bruce Clay, Inc. analytic tools are a cut above the rest. Be prepared to take some time to read and learn about their methodologies. These are the most comprehensive tools I have seen on the Internet and is well worth the time and energy. Bruce Clay, Inc. Internet Business Consultants - Search Engine Tools http://www.bruceclay.com/web_rank.htm Framework for Search Engine Optimization: 1. Identify competition Submit your obvious keyword terms and use the Research Tool to locate top ranked competing sites. 2. Link tracking Link tracking allows you to identify and choose possible sites that you will want as link partners once your site is content-rich and optimized. 3. Identify keywords Research the competition and query history information available through several sources. 4. Repeat 1-3 Repeat steps 1 through 3 until you have finished all your keyword searches 5. Combine keywords Once you have your personal list, validate each phrase for popularity as a search term. 6. Add keywords to content You are about to discover your real issue... you have insufficient or weak content. It takes a lot of words to convince a search engine that you are a subject matter expert. 7. Tune keyword list Once you have selected your major keywords, add the main words to your TITLE string, your META description string, your META keywords string, ALT tags (image tag parameter), and especially imbed them into your top-of-page displayed content. 8. Submit pages to search engines Once the same words are in your META title, description and keywords, and also in other text (Alt and comments) and displayed content, and you are satisfied with your results, and only then, is it appropriate to submit your URLs to each major search engine. 9. Check search engine registration Visit the search engine that you care about and see if you are registered by searching for your url. 10. Check placement There is a very specialized high-tech market for tools that convert raw data into intellectual capital that you can actually use. 29