I’ve chosen some keywords–Now what?

You need to add those keywords to the site’s copy (the written text content) as much as you can, without going overboard, at a keyword density of about 4-5% (a good rule of thumb is to use your keywords once every paragraph or two, so you don’t get flagged for spamming).  This is why your Articles section needs to be developed further: articles on the topic that will be seen as valuable, unique content, informative to your reader, and not just a bunch of fluff.  Even if (especially if) you are selling something in an e-Commerce store, you will want to provide as much valuable content as you can on the topic of your site, as a way to improve your Page Rank.

In addition to using your keywords on the actual page, you will also want to give each page its own meta tags for keywords and for the description.  To do this, insert the following somewhere between the and tags in the html source:

(Note:  The above example says up to 80 characters for the title, but it’s probably a better idea to cap it at 60.  Google has been said to only read the first 58 characters)

There have been changes in the way each search engine treats the meta tags in terms of how much weight they will carry, but it is always good to include them.  For example, Google doesn’t pay much attention anymore to the keywords in the meta tags due to certain sites abusing this technique, but there are other search engines that will still use them in determining how to rank your site.  Interestingly, the fewer keywords you include, the more weight each one will carry.  A good title, description, and relevant keywords are necessary for each page in your site, so make sure you give each page unique meta tags!
Even after doing all of the above, there is never any guarantee that you will be able to reach the first page of the SERP’s for your chosen keyword phrases, because competition is fierce; also, once you are on the first page, there is no guarantee that you will stay there, because Google is always changing their algorithms and your position will change according to their whim.

There are companies that charge anywhere from $50 a month to $2000 a month just for search engine optimization services, and although I am going to soon offer seo services, it is not yet cost effective for me to do this on a large scale. However,  I do all my web design work with seo in mind from the start, making a list of your keywords and building your site from an seo perspective using alt tags, meta tags, link titles, and keywords in the articles and other content items… However, link-building, manual directory submission, article writing, PPC campaigns, and other traffic building techniques are very time-consuming and must be looked at as a long-term campaign in order to be effective.  If you want me to refer you to some affordable seo professionals, just shoot me an email and I will get you in touch with some friends in the industry.

What about sitemaps and tracking?

One last thing that I will mention in this article: we will need to add a sitemap, using a sitemap generator, and add it to your Google Webmaster Tools profile, and also set up Google Analytics or some other traffic-monitoring script (we have also used StatCounter a lot in the past, but Google Analytics is what most clients prefer).  If you don’t have a Google Webmaster Tools account, go get one–it’s free and very valuable.  Once you are set up, go to the dashboard, add your site, verify that you are the owner (either by placing the special meta tag in your header of the index file or by placing the special html file in the root folder on your web server. Then go to this site and create a free sitemap (up to 500 URLs) and save it in the root folder (this is probably public_html, but it may differ depending on who your web host is).  Next, go back to your GWT dashboard and add the sitemap to the site by typing in the exact url (for example, mine is http://webovator.com/sitemap.xml  — you don’t have to type in the public_html here!)

Voila! You now have a sitemap added to your site profile in GWT, and the Googlebot will be crawling you soon!
Now to keep track of your traffic, use Google Analytics. Notice this will NOT increase your PR or your SERP positioning, at all. What it WILL do, is allow you to see where your visitors are coming from, so that you can fine-tune your keywords, once you are already indexed. All you have to do is just copy the javascript snippet provided and paste it into the bottom of your source code on each page that you want to monitor (or if you are using a CMS, it can be inserted via php include…but that’s a whole other show)…so until next time, good luck with your projects, and hit me up if you need any help or have any questions that I might be able to address, possibly in a future article.

What To Do Next:

• Keep track of the Search Queries people are using to find you.
• Sprinkle those search queries throughout your copy and in the meta tags
• Use those exact keywords as a query in Google, Yahoo, MSN, and find out which of your competitors are in the top spot for those searches.
• Go to your competitors’ Web sites and view their source code; what do they have in their meta tags?  How many times do they use those keywords per page?
• Take what you can from competitors and try to improve upon it.  Add better content, and each time you add new content, create and submit a new sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools.
• Rinse and Repeat.

For more ideas on how to pass up your competitors in the Search Engine Results Pages, check out the next article, called seo Spy Tactics.

• Better Adsense Fast
• Free Social Media Traffic Tips

I typed in my keywords but my site still didn’t come up on Google!!

Getting ranked for specific keywords can take several months, but there are some ways you can speed this up, and also try to improve your positioning in the index for each of your chosen keywords.  When you add new content to your site, it needs to be crawled by the Googlebots, and since there are also competitors going after the keywords, it’s hard to rise to the top of the SERP’s (search engine results pages).

Organic seo (Search Engine Optimization) techniques (as opposed to paid search marketing) include keyword-rich articles on your site, link building (getting other relevant sites to link to you, as a way to build your Page Rank), and filling out your meta tags for each page on the site.  You can also submit your site to free web directories*, and when those directories get crawled, they will hopefully pass some PR Juice over to your site.

* (not Free For Alls (FFA’s), not link farms, not bad neighborhoods, but 100% quality, honest directories–there are about 200 sites that are known to insiders as being the ones to get listed on, the rest can be ignored safely)

What you need to do is choose your keywords that you want to target (so for example, for my site Webovator.com, ‘Springfield Web Designers’ is a good keyword, because it is 3 words long, and therefore less competitive than a keyword like ‘Web Design’).  (As a side-note, the above link might be more effective if I used the keywords as the actual link text (in the anchor tag), so it would have the same URL as the destination, but it would look like this: Springfield Web Designers.

• Better Adsense Fast
• Free Social Media Traffic Tips

Why is my new site not found in Google / Other Search Engines?

This is a question I hear quite often from clients who may not be especially tech savvy, Web savvy, or whatnot, and it deserves some attention for that reason (future clients may even be reading this so that I don’t have to type it all out in an email).  So take what you can from this article, and feel free to leave comments and add more if you think I have forgotten some key points. (If needed I can devote a future blog entry to your comments/questions.)

Your site is down?  No, it isn’t.

Before we go any further, I should mention that typing your web address (URL) into the search bar is not the same thing as typing it into the address bar.  Just because nothing comes up on Google / Yahoo / Live Search, doesn’t mean the site is offline!  Your site is still public, it just is not available yet through the search engines.  It will be soon, so in the mean time, type the URL in the address bar…you’ll see your site.  And as long as your friends/customers know your domain name, they won’t need to use a search engine, just have them type out the address manually. Keep reading though, and we’ll talk about how we will get your site more visible…

So, when you type in your new (or newly redesigned) web address in a Google search field and hit enter, why do you not see your site listed?  After all, it’s been public for a whole day!

Well, the simple answer is, it doesn’t work like that.  You can’t just throw up a web page (or site) and immediately expect to be listed in the search engines, especially not on the first page!  This could take anywhere from a day to a few months, depending on many factors.  Please be patient with your web designer, as this is not under his/her control, and like with many other things, patience is a virtue.  That said, there are some ways to speed things up, if you need to get indexed as soon as possible (although 99% of my clients always want everything done as soon as possible)…

One good way to get indexed within 24 hours is to open a Google Pages account, and put some content up on your free Google site.  You can bet your bottom dollar it will be indexed almost right away.  Now, all you have to do is link to your other content from that Google page… Boom! Headshot.  Your other site(s) is now crawled and you are listed (although probably not very high yet) in the index.  So you are indexed…now how do you find yourself?  The easiest way is probably to search for your domain name!  So for example, if I want to find webovator.com, I search for webovator.com.  Sounds pretty simple, but not impressive.   It’s okay though, we are making some progress, because we know that we ARE listed, just not for which keywords.  Now we need to figure out how we want people to find us, and use those phrases as our keywords.

• Better Adsense Fast
• Free Social Media Traffic Tips