SEO Tutorial

This area of the website is dedicated to SEO Resources. It matters not if you are a beginner or an seo expert, you will find a lot of help for your optimisation work and education. From seo guides to outsourcing and tutorials. It is without doubt the best seo resource website around.

Introduction to the seo tutorial

If you are a webmaster or have an interest in the world of seo (search engine optimisation) then we have put together a tutorial that will teach you all about what search engines want and how to configure your website for maximum ranking advantage.

Search Engines

The whole reason for the seo industry is because we all want what the search engines can give us, Although their are hundreds of search engines, most webmasters are only interested in 3 – Google, Bing and Yahoo! in that order. However Bing now own Yahoo! so that leaves 2. There are also many search engines that use the database of Google or Bing. So we are looking to optimise for just these 2 search engines, and Google is responsible for around 80% of searches hence everyone concentrates on the big G.

The search engines send their spiders out to crawl all of the websites in their index, and based on what they find rank them accordingly. The search engines change their alogarithms regulalry but we know that they look for well structured sites with well themed original content that benefits the users experience. They look at bounce rates and links coming into your website pages.

Onpage SEO considerations

Several factors influence the position of a site in the search results. They can be divided into on-page and off-page.

on-page considerations include the content (text and images) on the pages. If your website pages have only a small amount of text it can hinder its progress in the search engines.

Number of Words
Search engines like to see good unique content that is of interest to the visitor. It is reccomended that you have around 500-1500 or possibly more for every page.

Make sure your content contains the keywords and variations that you want to rank for. You will then get visitors using the main keywords and the longtail versions and variations of those words and phrases.

How many keywords
You should ideally optimise any given webpage for a single keyword or phrase, using that word/phrase several tims throughout the content. Try to include your keyword between 3-6 times in the text. The more words you have the more you should include your keyword.

IF your keyword is a phrase (2 words or more) then its a good idea to use the phrase and the individual words several times in the text. If your keyword phrase is for example “blue widgets” thenyou should use the phrase “blue widgets” several times in the text and also put the singular words “blue” and “widget” within the text. This can be a good method for seo optimization.

Keyword density
You may hear the phrase keyword density, this means the number of times or frequency of the word as a percentage. If your entire text onpage is 500 words and you use your keyword 20 times then the keyword density is 4%. Many experts consider a good keyword density to be around 5-7%. If you use the word too many times you could get flagged for keyword spamming.

Other keyword considerations
As a rule the nearer to the beginning of your text you put your keywords the more significant it will be. Search engines also take more consideration with words that are in in headings, bold, italic or underlined.

Meta Tags

Heading tags
The keywords you are targeting on a page should be emphasized by using headings tags. In the HTML code or editor any text can be given a heading tag from 1-6, the H1 and H2 tags are generally all that is needed. When used they change the size of the text, making it much larger. Although use of CSS stylesheets allows a more normal look.

Bold, underline and italic

Although this was important a few years ago, putting certain keywords in bold or italics is considered a way to benefit your page in terms of search engine optimization. Although there is no real proof, as using H tages it will not hurt to emphasize keywords with a bold font. Just highlight your keywords two or three times on your webpage. Try to use the «strong» tag as well as bold for additional variation.

TITLE tag
The Title tag is arguably the most important tag for seo. You must balance using your target keywords but also making browsers want to click on your website. The link for your website displayed in search engines will contain this text and will be the first thing a user sees. So include your main keywords and also information that will entice a user to click. A Tile should be around 65 characters in length.

Keywords Meta tag
The keyword meta tag is waning in popularity and usefulness but is said to be used as a reference by some. It only takes a few moments to fill in so it maks sense to complete it. Make sure any words included here are also on the page and viewable by visitors.

Images title tag
Images and pictures on your page can have an alt tag or alternative text included. It is designed to be used if for some reason the users computer does not download the image, and shows a text description instead. It can help with your seo techniques to include text in these tags that describes the image and also adds content to your webpage.

Description Meta tag
The description meta tag is important because search engines can use this text for the display on their results pages if you have included it on your site. Use the tag to describe your services and include the keywords you want to optimise for. Make sure the description uses similar content to what is on the page and viewable to visitors.

Internal linking
A simple seo rule – use keywords in the text of page links that refer to other pages on your site and to any external Internet resources. Keywords in such links can slightly enhance page rank.

Number of pages
The general seo rule is: the more, the better. Increasing the number of pages on your website increases the visibility of the site to search engines. Also, if new information is being constantly added to the site, search engines consider this as development and expansion of the site. This may give additional advantages in ranking. You should periodically publish more information on your site – news, press releases, articles, useful tips, etc.

Offpage SEO considerations

Value of Links
Gaining backlinks or links to your website pages is an essential part of the seo process and the information used by the search engines when deciding your position. However having thousands of low quality links can be beaten by one good quality link. Not all links are equal.

When looking at links pointing to your pages, the search engines take several factors into account:-

Quality of referring pages
Any webpage that links to you will have a quality score. For example a link from the Times online newspaper is considered much better than a link from a blog that has just been published. The search engines take into account the quality, popularity and relevance of the page linking to you.

Types of Links

As a rule, the easier it is to get a backlink the less useful it is. For instance a link from a social bookmarking site or Twitter may be useful for a few hours but will be discounted quickly. However a link from a Government website page that is only linking to your website will carry much more clout. So remember while you are spending time getting links, to try and get quality links.

Search engine ranking Factors

A domain that is older is seen to have more authority and can help it to rank higher.

Website Content
To achieve the best ranking website requires that you have a useful, relevant website that is full of unique content and gives value to the visitor. If you can do this then getting links and ranking high will come much easier.

Unique Content
Make sure you do not just copy someone elses content and put it on your site. Search engines devour new useful content that is not published elsewhere. Take the time to construct good and structured information on your site.