Monday, September 12, 2011
TECH NEWS SEO Lesson 2: Let's Optimize Our Webpage
Labels:
ONLINE MARKETING,
SEO
Last week, we learnt about the SEO Lesson 1: Optimize The Wrong Keywords And You'll Likely Never See Results. I hope that can help you. Today we continue with the second lesson: "How Changing One Single Onpage Optimization Factor Can Boost Your Rankings By Over 350 Positions!” by Brad Callen too.
Ok, so now we've selected our main 3 keywords:l weight loss story
l weight loss picture
l safe weight loss
Notice that all of the keywords contain the word "weight loss". This will make things easier for us when we begin to optimize our offpage ranking factors which you'll learn about later.
Let's Optimize Our Webpage ...
The first thing we need to do is select a page Title for our website.
The page title should:
Include ONLY our main keywords. The least amount of words you can place in the title, the more weight. Google will give to each of the keywords and the higher you will rank.
When creating your page title, it should not look like this:
- Welcome to our website!
It should not even look like this, which does containg our main keywords, but contains an unnecessary number of words:
- weight loss story and weight loss picture and safe weight loss
Although that title isn't horrible and does contain all of your main keywords, you should do a couple of things to cut down on words used.
This would be a perfect title for your webpage:
- Weight Loss Story / Safe Weight Loss Picture
Notice that I've:
- Taken out all of the "ands"
- Replaced one of the "ands" with a "|" character
- Combined the keywords "Safe Weight Loss" with "Weight Loss Picture"
- Always Combine Your Keyword When Possible to cut down on the total number of words that are in your title!
Always Combine Your Keywords In The Page Title!
When Google looks at our title it will see all 3 of our keywords only. Combining keywords to cut down on the total number of keywords displayed in the title is a great way to boost the strength of each individual keyword, which will have an immediate impact on your ranking.
Add <h1> header tags
Next we'll need to add 1 <h1> header tag and place our most important keyword there.
The <h1> header tag should be as far towards the top of the page as possible. When Google reads a webpage, it views the text from the top left hand side of the page to the bottom right hand side of the page.
So, it's best to place your <h1> header tag on the top left hand or top/middle portion of your page. You can think of an <h1> header tag as a title for whatever content you have on your page.
For example, the <h1> header tag of this lesson would be:
These could be possible keywords we should target to begin with. Once we have our list of 3 to 4 keywords, we need to go to Google and check out the competition to see exactly how hard it will be to optimize for the
specified keyword.
"How changing 1 onpage optimization factor can boost your rankings by
over 350 positions!"
... and the html code would look like this <h1>"How changing 1 onpage optimization factor can boost your rankings by over 350 positions!"</h1>
Of course, I would have changed my lesson title to contain my main keyword if I was actually trying to optimize this page for Google. Also, if possible, it's ideal if you can include ONLY your main keyword within the h1 header tags. <h1>Weight Loss Story</h1> would be perfect.
Add <h2> header tags
Next, we'll need to create an <h2> header tag. This can be thought of as a sub heading for our webpage.
You should place your 2nd most important keyword in the <h2> header tag. The <h2> tag should be placed somewhere towards the top half of your webpage.
A good <h2> header tag for our example would be:
l <h2>safe weight loss<h2> (Usually it's best to place your primary keyword in your <h1> tags and your secondary keyword into the <h2> tags.
After we've done this, we need to actually create the content for our webpage. When writing the content, try to evenly sprinkle your main keywords throughout the copy. Don't overdo it though.
Try to mention each keyword in a natural way as you are writing, but be sure to include at least one of the keywords per 1-2 paragraphs, depending on how large your page is.
Tip: Make sure to mention your main keyword at the very top left and the very bottom right hand side of the webpage. A trick I like to use is to include this in the copyright information line at the bottom of the website.
For our example, this would be a good example:
© 2011 Copyright www.domain.com a weight loss story
Notice that it flows and doesn't really look too strange.
Bolding, italicizing and underlining ...
Once we've finished writing the copy, we should go through and bold, underline, or italicize some of the keywords only 1 time each, maximum. Only do 1 per keyword or it will hurt you more than it helps.
Properly include <alt> image tags ...
Next, click on the very top image of your webpage (This is usually your website's header graphic) and include an <alt> image tag using the text "weight loss story header" if you're adding this alt text to your website header graphic. Click on 2 more graphics throughout your webpage and enter your other 2 keywords, plus an extra word like "graphic" or "image"... For example, we would use "weight loss picture graphic" and "safe weight loss image". This ensures that Google won't view this as spam.
Force Google To Read Your Keywords First!
Now, remember I stated above that Google views your webpage from top left, to bottom right? Well, in general they do. But because most websites contain a left hand column which contains all of their navigation links...
Google WILL View all of the text in the left hand column Before The Body of the webpage.
How can you get around this? I've come up with a neat little trick that will ensure that Google reads the actual body of your webpage before the left hand column containing your navigational links.
Here is what you need to do:
Rather than creating a table that looks like this:
| navigational links | You body text... |
You should create a table that looks like this:
| You body text... |
By doing this, Google will read the top left hand row/column first... BUT will see that it is empty, so it will then read the body of your webpage and then read the 2nd left hand row/column which contains your navigational links! :-)
That's all there is to it!
In summary, I really want to point out the fact that, although good onpage optimization is something you'll really want to do, it is NOT how you make dramatic changes in your search engine ranking!
This is one of the biggest misconceptions in the search engine world. Many believe that by getting your keyword density just right, or by moving your keywords around on the page in just the right places, you'll really move up in the search engines.
That is not the case at all. It is the offpage optimization factors that will get you high rankings. I will teach you exactly what offpage optimization factors are, AND how to make sure you optimize these factors perfectly for Google!
Next lesson will be a doozy... It's titled:
"The Secret To Getting Listed In Google In 24 Hours!"
You can download the PDF file of Lesson 2 here.
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