Website Optimization - What it is & How to Use it

Website Optimization, website seo, or just simply "SEO" is the process of writing and designing your web pages so that the search engines as well as your target audience understands what your web page as well as your entire website is all about.

While this sounds like a simple process, it's actually a culmination of lots of little things that you do right in order to get your website optimized. The bottom line of website optimization is nothing more than getting your site listed within the first pages of a SERP or Search Engine Results Page.

Regardless of what industry you're in, chances are you're up against hundreds of thousands if not millions of competitors and at first glance it can seem rather daunting when you're trying to compete against these other websites.

However, there are some fairly easy processes that you can follow in order to get your web pages properly optimized. While this is only a fraction of what you can learn in the Bonehead SEO Course, it will help your web pages get moving in the right direction.

Here are just a few tips to help you along the way:

Keywords

By far, the most important first step you need to take is to use those keywords and phrases that people are searching on right now within a search engine. While you might be tempted to just "guess" at what people are searching on in your industry, don't. You want the actual phrases that lots of people are using to find your product or service.

One way to go about this is to use a service such as Wordtracker. Wordtracker offers a free version as well as a full-fledged paid version (with a 7-day-free-trial). While you will get more results as well as more details on the keywords you're researching with the paid version, the free version works just fine if you're on a tight budget.

Simply visit Wordtracker and enter in a word or phrase that describes the kind of business that you're in. What Wordtracker will return to you is a list of those phrases that people are using right now online that include your topic.

It's these phrases that you want to focus on within your website.

The Title

Once you've decided upon a phrase that you'll be targeting on a web page, you'll next want to use that phrase in your page's title. The title of the page is an extremely important factor in how search engines rank that web page.

If for instance you were targeting the keyword phrase of "website optimization" then you'd want to use "website optimization" in your title tag.

The Heading

Next, you'll want to use this same phrase in a heading on your web page. The heading will be one of the first things that a site visitor (and the search engines) will see so you want to be sure it's contained within a header tag at the top of the page. Again, use the keywords you chose for the web page within the header.

The Body Text

As you might imagine, the body text of the web page should incorporate the keyword phrase you have chosen for that page. Use the phrase where necessary but whatever you do, do not "keyword stuff" your web page.

Keyword stuffing means that you use the same phrase you're optimizing that page for multiple amounts of times. This often makes the content sound unnatural and the search engines will pick up the fact that you are attempting to trick them by using your keyword multiple times throughout the text.

Instead, just write naturally and incorporate words and phrases related to but not identical to the main keyword phrase you're working with.

In our example of the keyword phrase "website optimization", I might use related words such as "website seo", "seo", "search engine optimization", "ranking", and "conversion."

Just remember that when you do start optimizing your web pages that you make use of your main keyword phrase you've chosen in the appropriate spots on your web page and have also included related words and phrases throughout the content.

This will help get your web pages moving in the right direction.

For more SEO Tips visit http://www.BoneheadSEO.com/blog/

Resources:
Wordtracker free keywords tool - http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com

Wordtracker's 7-day-free trial - http://www.BoneheadSEO.com/wordtracker.php

How To Get Listed in Google In Less Than An Hour A free 18-page report at http://BoneheadSEO.com/freeSEO/

How To Get Listed in Google In Less Than An Hour

I’ve got a nice surprise for you today.

It’s a brand new free report that I’ve just released entitled Bonehead SEO’s Quick Traffic Guide and it will show you (with proof included) how you can get your website, your product, your blog, whatever it is, listed in Google in under an hour!

Now, even though there’s plenty of proof included in the report I obviously can’t *guarantee* that the same will happen to you but on the tests that I’ve run so far, it’s never failed.

You can get this free 18-page report at http://BoneheadSEO.com/freeSEO/

Enjoy it, use it, and if you’ve had the kind of success using this same method yourself, let me know about it by posting your success stories here!

Who said Friday the 13th was bad luck?

- Kristine

6 Tips on Article Writing

Not many people look forward to writing articles. As a matter of fact, some find it downright unpleasant to even think about putting words to paper.

But the bottom line is, if you're looking to get seen in the search engines, you'll have to write content at some point in time, whether that be for your blog, for your website, for a newsletter and for article directories.

Here are a few tips on article writing that may help you tackle that initial fear and get you up and moving.

1. Use a title that will make the reader want to find out more. Titles that being with a curiosity factor will make the reader want to find out more. So use words such as "how", "which", "these" and "what".

2. Use numbers where possible. When you incorporate the above words with a number, this will help to increase that curiosity. For example, "These 7 Tips Will Get Your Articles Read in Nothing Flat."

3. Keep the paragraphs short and to the point. No one wants to read a novel especially if they're skimming through an article. So keep the paragraphs short enough to cover the point you want to make.

4. Separate related paragraphs with sub-headings that stand out and draw the readers eye.

5. When you can, and when it makes sense to do so, use a list. You can use numbers like I did here or just bullet points. People often find reading lists much easier than they do paragraphs of information.

6. Make it interesting! So many articles today are bland and boring giving "just the facts". Spice it up with words that convey emotion like "disgusted", "amused", "powerful", and more.

Above all, take a look at what the popular articles are that are currently being published right now. Many article directories have an area where you can see which articles on your topic are being read and published and then take a look and see what it is that makes them so interesting.

After all, when you're looking to SEO your site, one of the things you need are incoming links. Help make that a bigger possibility for you by using the tips on article writing listed above.

Get more free tips at http://ping.fm/aYjeQ

A question was submitted to BoneheadSEO yesterday about those extra links that tend to show up in a Google Search Results page.

The Question:
Hello,
I have a burning question and I can't find an answer in SEO course available.
If you do this search: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=kurir&btnG=Search

You'll notice the first result has 8 other links besides the main one (Crna hronika, sport etc.). That must increase the CTR a lot.

The question is: what makes Google do that for one site and not for another one?
What should you do with your site to get such extra links in the results?

Best Regards,
Eko

Here's an example of what they look like:

These are called "Site Links" and the bottom line is that Google does not tell you exactly how to get these sitelinks for your own site.

However, each website that contains these sitelinks has a few common denominators:

• They're typically an authority site.
• They have an easy-to-navigate hierarchical structure. In the case above, there is a section for "Sports", a section for "Stars" and a section for "Politics" as Eko pointed out.
• They have lots of incoming one-way links from a variety of sources.
• The sites are easy to navigate.
• The age of the site tends to be a defining factor.

If we pick apart the site above, there's a few things to note about it:

• The site has a PageRank of 6.
• It has over over 100,000 links pointing to the site itself including internal pages.
• Sites such as these generally have been around for years.
• The site has lots of useful information that readers enjoy by clicking through to various pages.

You'll generally find these sitelinks on major news sites like CNN and highly visited sites such as Oprah's site at Oprah.com.

So while these sitelinks can be a huge boost for your search engine traffic, they aren't easy to come by. Google must deem your site "worthy" enough to receive these sitelinks.

If you use Google Webmaster tools, at http://www.Google.com/webmasters/tools/ and you've added your site, you'll be able to navigate to the section where Google tells you whether or not any sitelinks have been identified on your site as candidates for the Google Search Results page.

The bottom line is that there is no hard and fast rule to getting sitelinks placed on your site aside from some of the factors that are believed to be important as mentioned above.

If you'd like more information about sitelinks, visit:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=47334&topic=8523

Kristine

BoneheadSEO.com - SEO Training