Search Engine Optimization Tutorial

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) will help place your site higher in the natural search engine rankings. By natural, we mean free, as opposed to pay-per-click advertising. So by optimizing your site for the search engines, you will receive free traffic.

SEO revolves around two major processes; on-site optimization and off-site optimization. On-site includes anything that you control on your site. So title tags, content, linking structure within your site and all other factors on your pages. Off-site is everything else. This means all the links to your site from other sites on the Internet. In theory, you can't control off-site factors.

Between on-site and off-site optimization your site's rankings are determined. Therefore, you need to have a solid understanding of these two processes in order to optimize your site. We discuss both processes in great detail in our SEO course. You will learn the details of keyword research first so you are sure to uncover which keywords and phrases to target on and off your site. From there, we cover the basics of on-site optimization and finally off-site optimization.

Using both on-site and off-site factors you can rank your site as high as any other on the Internet. Although often overlooked, you can get page one rankings for many sites by optimizing the pages on your site (the on-site factors) along with minimal link building as long as a strict blueprint is followed. By building your site properly, you will magnify the power of the incoming links to your site. Therefore, you need to spend less time building links.

Here's what the tutorial covers:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is an acronym for "search engine optimization" or "search engine optimizer." Deciding to hire an SEO is a big decision that can potentially improve your site and save time, but you can also risk damage to your site and reputation. Make sure to research the potential advantages as well as the damage that an irresponsible SEO can do to your site. Many SEOs and other agencies and consultants provide useful services for website owners, including:

• Review of your site content or structure
• Technical advice on website development: for example, hosting, redirects, error pages, use of JavaScript
• Content development
• Management of online business development campaigns
• Keyword research
• SEO training
• Expertise in specific markets and geographies.

Keep in mind that the Google search results page includes organic search results and often paid advertisement (denoted by the heading "Sponsored Links") as well. Advertising with Google won't have any effect on your site's presence in our search results. Google never accepts money to include or rank sites in our search results, and it costs nothing to appear in our organic search results. Free resources such as Webmaster Tools, the official Webmaster Central blog, and our discussion forum can provide you with a great deal of information about how to optimize your site for organic search. Many of these free sources, as well as information on paid search, can be found on Google Webmaster Central.
Before beginning your search for an SEO, it's a great idea to become an educated consumer and get familiar with how search engines work. We recommend starting here:

• Google Webmaster Guidelines
• Google 101: How Google crawls, indexes and serves the web.

If you're thinking about hiring an SEO, the earlier the better. A great time to hire is when you're considering a site redesign, or planning to launch a new site. That way, you and your SEO can ensure that your site is designed to be search engine-friendly from the bottom up. However, a good SEO can also help improve an existing site.
Some useful questions to ask an SEO include:

• Can you show me examples of your previous work and share some success stories?
• Do you follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines?
• Do you offer any online marketing services or advice to complement your organic search business?
• What kind of results do you expect to see, and in what timeframe? How do you measure your success?
• What's your experience in my industry?
• What's your experience in my country/city?
• What's your experience developing international sites?
• What are your most important SEO techniques?
• How long have you been in business?
• How can I expect to communicate with you? Will you share with me all the changes you make to my site, and provide detailed information about your recommendations and the reasoning behind them?

While SEOs can provide clients with valuable services, some unethical SEOs have given the industry a black eye through their overly aggressive marketing efforts and their attempts to manipulate search engine results in unfair ways. Practices that violate our guidelines may result in a negative adjustment of your site's presence in Google, or even the removal of your site from our index. Here are some things to consider:

• Be wary of SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that send you email out of the blue. Amazingly, we get these spam emails too:
  

  "Dear google.com,
  I visited your website and noticed that you are not listed in most of the major search engines and directories..."

  Reserve the same skepticism for unsolicited email about search engines as you do for "burn fat at night" diet pills or requests to help transfer funds from deposed dictators.
  
• No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a "special relationship" with Google, or advertise a "priority submit" to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our Add URL page or by submitting a Sitemap and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.
  
• Be careful if a company is secretive or won't clearly explain what they intend to do. Ask for explanations if something is unclear. If an SEO creates deceptive or misleading content on your behalf, such as doorway pages or "throwaway" domains, your site could be removed entirely from Google's index. Ultimately, you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire, so it's best to be sure you know exactly how they intend to "help" you. If an SEO has FTP access to your server, they should be willing to explain all the changes they are making to your site.
  
• You should never have to link to an SEO.Avoid SEOs that talk about the power of "free-for-all" links, link popularity schemes, or submitting your site to thousands of search engines. These are typically useless exercises that don't affect your ranking in the results of the major search engines -- at least, not in a way you would likely consider to be positive.
  
• Choose wisely. While you consider whether to go with an SEO, you may want to do some research on the industry. Google is one way to do that, of course. You might also seek out a few of the cautionary tales that have appeared in the press, including this article on one particularly aggressive SEO: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002002970_nwbizbriefs12.html. While Google doesn't comment on specific companies, we've encountered firms calling themselves SEOs who follow practices that are clearly beyond the pale of accepted business behavior. Be careful.
  
• Be sure to understand where the money goes.While Google never sells better ranking in our search results, several other search engines combine pay-per-click or pay-for-inclusion results with their regular web search results. Some SEOs will promise to rank you highly in search engines, but place you in the advertising section rather than in the search results. A few SEOs will even change their bid prices in real time to create the illusion that they "control" other search engines and can place themselves in the slot of their choice. This scam doesn't work with Google because our advertising is clearly labeled and separated from our search results, but be sure to ask any SEO you're considering which fees go toward permanent inclusion and which apply toward temporary advertising.
  
• What are the most common abuses a website owner is likely to encounter?
One common scam is the creation of "shadow" domains that funnel users to a site by using deceptive redirects. These shadow domains often will be owned by the SEO who claims to be working on a client's behalf. However, if the relationship sours, the SEO may point the domain to a different site, or even to a competitor's domain. If that happens, the client has paid to develop a competing site owned entirely by the SEO.Another illicit practice is to place "doorway" pages loaded with keywords on the client's site somewhere. The SEO promises this will make the page more relevant for more queries. This is inherently false since individual pages are rarely relevant for a wide range of keywords. More insidious, however, is that these doorway pages often contain hidden links to the SEO's other clients as well. Such doorway pages drain away the link popularity of a site and route it to the SEO and its other clients, which may include sites with unsavory or illegal content.
• What are some other things to look out for?
There are a few warning signs that you may be dealing with a rogue SEO. It's far from a comprehensive list, so if you have any doubts, you should trust your instincts. By all means, feel free to walk away if the SEO:
• owns shadow domains
• puts links to their other clients on doorway pages
• offers to sell keywords in the address bar
• doesn't distinguish between actual search results and ads that appear on search results pages
• guarantees ranking, but only on obscure, long keyword phrases you would get anyway
• operates with multiple aliases or falsified WHOIS info
• gets traffic from "fake" search engines, spyware, or scumware
• has had domains removed from Google's index or is not itself listed in Google
If you feel that you were deceived by an SEO in some way, you may want to report it.In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) handles complaints about deceptive or unfair business practices. To file a complaint, visit: http://www.ftc.gov/ and click on "File a Complaint Online," call 1-877-FTC-HELP, or write to:

Federal Trade CommissionCRC-240Washington, D.C. 20580

If your complaint is against a company in a country other than the United States, please file it at http://www.econsumer.gov/.

Optimizing Your Web Site for the Search Engines

One of the best and most obvious ways to gain new web design clients is by ranking better in the search engines. If you can’t afford to hire a professional search engine optimization (SEO) company then read this article all the way through because I’m about to teach you a few strategies that we’ve personally used to get Interspire.com ranked on the front page of Google for a lot of competitive search terms.
What is Search Engine Optimization?
Search engine optimization (or SEO as it’s affectionately called) is the ongoing process of tweaking and modifying your website in an effort to rank competitively in the search engines for one of more keyowords that people will use to search for your business.
As a web designer I’m sure you’d agree that if more people were able to find your site in the search engines then you could dramatically increase the number of clients you have, right? Well it’s the same for most businesses, and a good SEO plan is where you should start.
The “One Hour a Day, 30 Day” SEO Plan
Search engine optimization is part science, part art and part luck. The good news is that we can use a proven scientific approach to help your website rank better in the search engines, but you first have to decide which keyword(s) you want your site to rank for.
If you’re a web designer in Los Angeles, then here are a few examples of keywords you absolutely would want to be on the front page of the search engines for:

• Los Angeles Web Designer
• Web Designer California
• Web Design Company Los Angeles
• etc…

To determine which keywords you want to rank for just ask yourself: “If I were one of my potential customers, which words would I use to find my company?”. You should be able to come up with at least a handful of keywords.
If you can dedicate just one hour a day (for 30 days) to the search engine optimization plan I’m about to show you then there’s a great chance that you’ll be able to significantly improve how your web site ranks in the search engines for the keywords people are using to find you.
#1: Getting Links Back to Your Website
This is hands down the most important search engine optimization strategy you can spend your time on. When another website links back to yours, Google sees this as a positive vote for your website, and as such will take this into account when determining which sites should be at the top of the pile.
The more sites you have that link back to you, the higher your site will appear in the search results, however there is one main factor to consider with this strategy, and that’s the credibility of the sites linking back to yours.
Google’s PageRank algorithm is a measure of the popularity of a website. If you download the Google toolbar you can see the PageRank of any site you visit. It’s just a measure between 0 and 10 – 0 means the site is new and has no popularity and a PageRank of 10 means the site is one of the most trusted and popular sites on the Internet.
Interspire.com for example has a PageRank of 7. Yahoo.com has a PageRank of 10.CNN.com has a PageRank of 9, Business.com has a PageRank of 7, etc.
When looking for sites to link back to yours, the higher the PageRank the more “points” Google will award you for having that site linking to you, thus pushing you higher up in the search results for your keywords.
The quickest and cheapest way to get sites linking back to your site is to send them an email and just ask for it, but what type of sites should you request links from? In general they should be similar in topic to your site, so as a web designer you might request links back from sites that talk about web design, marketing, attracting new leads and customers, etc.
A link acquisition strategy over the medium/long term is to get serious about publishing high quality articles on your web site that others will link back to. We’ve been using this strategy for years and we’ve written dozens of articles that are linked to from all over the Internet. Because we don’t have to actively solicit these links, it makes it much easier to get links using quality articles.
So what should you write about and how often should you write? One article a week is a great start. Aim for 500-1,000 words and write about what you know: how to choose a web designer, why it’s important to have a usable website, how to create a web page in Dreamweaver, etc. These are topics your potential customers will expect you to know about and after reading your articles they will come to respect you as an authority on web design.
#2: On-Page Search Engine Optimization
On-page keyword optimization involves making changes to existing pages on your website so they include the keywords you want to rank in the search engines for. On-page optimization includes a number of different “sub strategies”, which are:

• Keyword density: How often do the keywords you want to rank for appear on your page? This is measured as a percentage, such as 5.8%. So let’s say you want to rank on Google for “red sports cars”. On most pages of your site you’ll want to include the text “red sports cars” and also variations of this phrase, such as “red cars that are sporty”, “sports cars that are red”, “sports cars”, etc. There’s no hard and fast rule, but you generally want a keyword density of about 7-12% for the keywords you want to rank for. That means that if you have 100 words on your page, 7-12 of them should be “red”, “sports” or “car”. You can check your keyword density at www.ranks.nl.
   
• Header tags: You absolutely MUST include the keywords you want to rank for in a <h1>…</h1> tag on your site. H1 tags tell the search engines that the text between them is important, and you should aim for just one <h1> tag on each page as close to the top as you can. In our example you might use <h1>Red Sports Cars</h1> on one page and <h1>Luxury Red Sports Cars</h1> on another page.
   
• Page title: This is the most important on-page thing you can optimize. Your page title is the text that’s used to form the link back to your site from the search engines, so it needs to include the keywords you want to rank for, and usually in variations, such as <title>Red sports cars, luxury sports cars, racing sports cars , red sports cars</title>
   
• Internal linking structure: You want to use the keywords you want to rank for to link between pages on your site. For example, on your home page you might link to a category page using the text “sports cars” and on that category page you would link back to your home page with the text “red sports car”. This is an internal two-way link, and although internal links don’t hold nearly as much weight as external ones, you should link to different pages on your site using a few different combinations of your keywords.
   
• Keywords at the very top of the page: You should always include your main keywords as close to the top of the page as you can, because Google will look at the text on your site from top-to-bottom and will treat the text closer to the top of the page with a higher importance.

Conclusion
There’s a lot more to search engine optimization than I’ve talked about here, however what I’ve mentioned above is a good place to start if you can’t afford to hire an SEO company or want to get started learning about SEO so that you can eventually offer it to your clients as an additional paid service.