SEO Basics

SEO Basics | The Art and Science of Search Engine Optimization

July 21st, 2009, Author: Nathan Hulls, Categories: seo

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This week I spent 2 hours consulting a not for profit on SEO basics and its amazing how just a small amount of knowledge in the basics of search engine optimization can go a long way.

This company is a reputable Australian company, with a Google Page Rank of 6 (which is very good for a company who knows nothing about SEO), yet they were only getting 1000 to 2000 unique visitors per month, for keywords which had quite low levels of competition.

The jury is still out as to the results they will get after just 2 hours of SEO basics but I would dare to commit to atleast double that traffic within a month or so after implementing some of the onsite search engine optmization techniques and strategies I taught them.

So for newbies to internet marketing, blogging and making money online, its really important to get a basic understanding of SEO in the early days as your build your website or blog.

What is SEO and How Does It Relate To Me?

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is both an art form and a science which involves techniques and strategies in how you publish your website and web content to gain the attention of Search Engines (like Google) to assist with driving traffic to your website.

Now understand that SEO and search engine traffic should be just one source of traffic for your online business, never rely on one source of traffic to build your online business, as I’m sure you’ve all heard it said “Dont put all your eggs in one basket”.

Search engines can be quite temperamental, and if they make a change which takes you from #1 to completely disappearing from their radar and you’re totally reliant on Search Engine Traffic then your business could be in trouble, so while its important to focus on SEO and optimizing your website and content for Search Traffic, dont let it be your only source of traffic.

Google Search Engine is really the big daddy amongst a myriad of search engines, with over 80% of the world wide search traffic. So in most of what I’ll cover in this post, we’ll consider that we’re Optimizing for Google Search.

Other search engines include:

Yahoo!
MSN / Bing
Ask.com
Business.com

There are essentially 4 elements to the basics of SEO:

Keyword Research
SEO Copywriting
Link Building
Onsite Search Engine Optimization

SEO Basics - Keyword Research

We have looked at the basics of Keyword Research in previous posts, when talking about optimizing blog posts for SEO and also optimizing for Google Adsense.

For general SEO, its important to do your keyword research as there’s no point guessing which keywords you think you should be targetting for Search Engine Traffic.

In conducting your Keyword Research start by creating a list of what I call Core or Root keywords.

Single keywords which you believe are relevant to your target market and the products or services you’re offering, and the topics your website covers.

Once you have a list of 10 to 20 core keywords open up Google Keyword Research Tool, make sure you have selected your targetted country - eg, Australia, United States, All countries and territories, and enter your core keywords into the keyword research tool one at a time and press “Get keyword ideas”.

This keyword research tool will then return results of which keywords and phrases people are actually searching for, when searching for topics related to your chosen keyword.

There is a drop down which is titled “Choose columns to be displayed:” Select the option “Show All”.

The keyword results will allow you to see the following:

Estimated Ad Position
Estimated Av. CPC
Advertiser Competition
Local Search Volume ‘month’
Global Monthly Search Volume
Search Volume Trends
Highest Volume Occurred In

The main columns you will need to take notice of are:

Local Search Volume

This column will give you the figure for how many people searched for the specific keyword, in your targetted location in the previous month.

If the column returns “Not Enough Data” it simply means there has not been a significant enough amount of search traffic for that keyword to register.

Search Volume Trends

The search volume trends give an indication, month by month of the trend of that specific keyword. For our research purposes we want to target uptrending and sideways trending keyword terms, as opposed to down trending keywords.

Keyword Research Tips

When identifying keywords to target for your SEO there are a number of elements you need to consider:

1. Develop a List of Long Tail Keywords

From the core keyword, the keyword research tool will list related keywords and keyword phrases.

The more specific a keyword, or keyword phrase is to your topic, business, service or product, the more effective your search traffic will be, and ultimately more profitable your business will be.

Its much better to rank well for a specific keyword phrase which has lower levels of search traffic, where the keyword is a ‘buying keyword’ or a much more specific keyword phrase eg ‘how to make chocolate cakes’ rather than ‘cakes’ - even if the core keyword has 100 times as much traffic.

2. Target Medium To High Traffic Volume Keywords

From the “Local Search Volume” column we can identify medium to high traffic volume keywords in your target market.

I personally consider medium traffic volume keywords anything over 1000 searches per month.

3. Research Competition For Search Terms In Google

Once you have your list of longer tail, keyword phrases with medium to high traffic volume, start to search on those terms in Google (make sure if you’re targetting google worldwide that you’re on google.com and searching the entire web, rather than just your country of residence).

When Google returns their search results, have a look and see how many other websites you would be competing with, on the top right of the search results page Google will tell you

“Results 1 - 10 of about 17,100,000 for keyword . (0.31 seconds)”

You ultimately want to identify medium to high traffic keyword phrases which have low to medium level competition.

I would consider low level competition anything under 100,000 websites, so aim for under 1,000,000 competing websites.

SEO Basics - Copywriting

The writing of your pages website copy should include a combined focus on writing relevant and informative copy, which making the use of the keyword phrases you have identified in your Keyword Research.

Its often good to write your website copy, or blog posts first and then go back over them to see how you can incorporate your identified keyword phrases.

DO NOT: stuff your copy with keywords, making your website copy obviously spammy and hard to read.

DO: Use plural, singular and ‘ing’ versions of your keywords and keyword phrases

DO: Mix up the locations of your keyword phrases - headings, paragraphcs, links etc

DO: Use semantically related words and phrases

A good format to use for SEO Basics Copywriting is:

Tell the reader what you’re going to tell them - Introduction
Tell them - body
Tell them what you told them - overview/conclusion

SEO Basics - Link Building

Google sees links which come from other websites to yours as a recommendation for your website.

The more people you have recommending you, the more impressed Google will be with your website and believe that what you have to say is more valuable than websites which have less links.

There are a number of linking elements including:

Page Rank of the linking website
Link text used in the link
Position of the link on the page of the linking website
Reciprocal linking
Paid Linking
Subject Matter of Sites Linking To You

SEO Basics - On Page Optimization

SEO Copywriting is writing the body copy of your website pages to be optimized for Search Engine Traffic, for your selected keywords.

You should use the same optimization structure for your website pages as previously discussed in Optimizing for Adsense Ads.

To properly optimize a page for SEO using the long tail keywords you have identified you want to target you must position the keywords on each of your website pages in targetted positions.

Rather than religiously following percentages here’s a good method to follow for onsite or on page SEO basics:

Use in first paragraph
Use in last paragraph
Use it every time you can naturally
Bold it at least once (not everytime)
Italicise it at least once (not everytime)
Try to include it in headings
Use related keywords and longtails throughout your content

Do that, ignore exact percents, and you’ll be fine.

Woah… this post escalated real quickly didn’t it… a lot longer than I first intended.

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