Providing quality Denver SEO Expert services along the Colorado front range since March 2004. For a complete site analysis and consultation contact us today. Use this blog as a resource for other free SEO tools and sites that can help you analyze your web site and increase your knowledge on what elements go into building a better website.
A small business website can benefit from understanding the key concepts of Link Building, SEO Copywriting Content, Strategic Keyword Research, and Site Visibility in search engines.
Call Us at 303.501.4944
Professional Denver SEO Consultant Specialists are ready to help you immediately with all of your Search Engine Optimization needs. We serve all sizes and types of businesses in the United States of America.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Monday, July 21, 2008
Website Analytics and Site Statistics
I use numerous web analytics tools to ensure sound development and continued improvement of website performance. Google webmaster tools is great for submitting XML site maps, discovering if you have any duplicate metatags, and for diagnosing if there are crawl problems experienced by the Googlebot in spidering your site.
Along the Colorado Front Range area we provide professional Denver SEO Consultant services to clients in all businesses and industries.
Site Server Statistics
Site server statistics or metrics should be offered by your hosting company as a free service for analytics such as referrers, keywords your site is being found for (eg. Hits and visitors), for traffic and error statistics, and for most popular pages. The website statistics tool I’m most familiar with is the Webalizer tool as a server log analysis service, and also the advanced AWStats file log analyzer tool. Again, these services are provided by web hosting companies.
SEO Tools
My favorite free SEO tool for keyword prominence and density is too valuable to reveal freely as my competitors read this blog (sorry). Site analytics and keyword research tools used include Compete.com, the Google Adwords keyword suggestion tool, Keyworddiscovery.com, Spyfu.com, the Seobook.com keyword suggestion tool, the Google Toolbar Page Rank checking tool. The SEO Tool Yahoo Search Explorer is no longer in service unfortunately. Don't Forget Domain-Level Metrics
Also, commonly used in competitor analysis projects are Domain Tools examinations for a closer look at domain-level factors. Alexa is great for domain traffic ranking metrics.
By the way I always renew my domains in five year increments to let the search engines know that I'm serious about the long term success and dedication to the domain and url registration. This simple but powerful practice could make a definite difference on your site’s rankings. Each major search engine has its own proprietary operators and commands to analyze your links and index inclusion. Make sure to have a Robots Text file file residing on your root domain in order to keep in line with good web design and enable spidering of web pages you want included in the indexes.
There are also high investment vendors and companies for Web Analytics such as Omniture.com and Webtrends.com offering a full suite of total business optimization services.
Along the Colorado Front Range area we provide professional Denver SEO Consultant services to clients in all businesses and industries.
Site Server Statistics
Site server statistics or metrics should be offered by your hosting company as a free service for analytics such as referrers, keywords your site is being found for (eg. Hits and visitors), for traffic and error statistics, and for most popular pages. The website statistics tool I’m most familiar with is the Webalizer tool as a server log analysis service, and also the advanced AWStats file log analyzer tool. Again, these services are provided by web hosting companies.
SEO Tools
My favorite free SEO tool for keyword prominence and density is too valuable to reveal freely as my competitors read this blog (sorry). Site analytics and keyword research tools used include Compete.com, the Google Adwords keyword suggestion tool, Keyworddiscovery.com, Spyfu.com, the Seobook.com keyword suggestion tool, the Google Toolbar Page Rank checking tool. The SEO Tool Yahoo Search Explorer is no longer in service unfortunately. Don't Forget Domain-Level Metrics
Also, commonly used in competitor analysis projects are Domain Tools examinations for a closer look at domain-level factors. Alexa is great for domain traffic ranking metrics.
By the way I always renew my domains in five year increments to let the search engines know that I'm serious about the long term success and dedication to the domain and url registration. This simple but powerful practice could make a definite difference on your site’s rankings. Each major search engine has its own proprietary operators and commands to analyze your links and index inclusion. Make sure to have a Robots Text file file residing on your root domain in order to keep in line with good web design and enable spidering of web pages you want included in the indexes.
There are also high investment vendors and companies for Web Analytics such as Omniture.com and Webtrends.com offering a full suite of total business optimization services.
Link Juice and White Hat SEO
Usually you will have one to three primary pages that attract the most search engine hits and site visitors, and you also have one or more web pages that lead to the most business transactions or conversions. The more important a particular web page is, the more link juice you want pointing to it –from both offsite sources and through internal linking (eg. on-site). An Advanced SEO knows the difference between insufficient links, and overdoing links in high volume which is spam.
Link Juice
Link juice is the terminology for passing value and emphasis from one web page to another through web linking. Webmasters need to ensure their content and links are published and designed in order to pass link juice to your most cherished web pages through link attributes such as keyword anchor text, varied anchor text, and a higher volume of hyperlinks as compared to links incoming to less important web pages. This process of designing internal link juice will educate the search engines on which web pages you want to be most important focus for your site. If both you’re unique content and incoming links are good enough, the search engines are likely to reward that web page.
One method to increase the link juice leading into your small business website is to undertake a link building campaign.
Web Page Spidering or Crawling and Algorithms
Web pages are spidered or crawled by bots and evaluated by computer software called algorithms. The objective of an Advanced SEO is to stay in compliance and within guidelines of all major search engines and also serve great web pages to visitors. Since algorithms are non-public documents you need to have a good intuition and feel for what is right.
White Hat SEO
Beyond the algorithms, in some cases your content could be evaluated by a search engine human editor. If your web pages are blatantly and obviously spam they can be manually penalized and knocked down in SERP results or worse. White Hat SEO practices, good copywriting, and good linking practices will avoid the problem of manual penalties. Be sure to keep within the Google webmaster guidelines.
Graphical Images, Alt-tags, & Good SEO Practice
For example with off-page elements using best practice for images, on your web pages make sure to label your image alt-tags accurately and appropriately, and not load your alt-tags with keyword spam. Describe the image or construct a short sentence for the alt tag. Larger images on the page will be seen as more relevant with a higher prominence, as compared to smaller images. For example a large sized header image with appropriate keyword alt tag will deliver prominence and can be good web site design. I try to have several images on a page to make the page more interesting to visitors and to incorporate alt tags and images that are very relevant to the page keyword focus.
Link Juice
Link juice is the terminology for passing value and emphasis from one web page to another through web linking. Webmasters need to ensure their content and links are published and designed in order to pass link juice to your most cherished web pages through link attributes such as keyword anchor text, varied anchor text, and a higher volume of hyperlinks as compared to links incoming to less important web pages. This process of designing internal link juice will educate the search engines on which web pages you want to be most important focus for your site. If both you’re unique content and incoming links are good enough, the search engines are likely to reward that web page.
One method to increase the link juice leading into your small business website is to undertake a link building campaign.
Web Page Spidering or Crawling and Algorithms
Web pages are spidered or crawled by bots and evaluated by computer software called algorithms. The objective of an Advanced SEO is to stay in compliance and within guidelines of all major search engines and also serve great web pages to visitors. Since algorithms are non-public documents you need to have a good intuition and feel for what is right.
White Hat SEO
Beyond the algorithms, in some cases your content could be evaluated by a search engine human editor. If your web pages are blatantly and obviously spam they can be manually penalized and knocked down in SERP results or worse. White Hat SEO practices, good copywriting, and good linking practices will avoid the problem of manual penalties. Be sure to keep within the Google webmaster guidelines.
Graphical Images, Alt-tags, & Good SEO Practice
For example with off-page elements using best practice for images, on your web pages make sure to label your image alt-tags accurately and appropriately, and not load your alt-tags with keyword spam. Describe the image or construct a short sentence for the alt tag. Larger images on the page will be seen as more relevant with a higher prominence, as compared to smaller images. For example a large sized header image with appropriate keyword alt tag will deliver prominence and can be good web site design. I try to have several images on a page to make the page more interesting to visitors and to incorporate alt tags and images that are very relevant to the page keyword focus.
Unique Content and SEO Copywriting
Unique Content is necessary in order to have a high-performing site and stand out. You should never have more than two to three words on a web page that are in the same consecutive order sequence as another competing web page –this is my personal rule. The more unique your content the better.
For more Denver SEO Expert tips on seo copywriting and the subject of SEO visit our main business website.
If you intend to create a site that performs and stands out on it's own, then author and publish unique web content that is keyword rich with high relevance to the main topic keywords. Use of industry-related buzz-terms and higher vocabulary terminologies will help with uniqueness.
SEO Copywriting means designing in all three types of content on a single page –for visitors, for keyword rankings in search engines, and for driving your desired call to action and conversions. You want searchers to find your site through SERP hits and web page visits, and then locate the solution to their problem without them having to waste time. If your site looks reputable, has a professional appearance, and gives the visitor what they seek they will absolutely do business with you.
Pull in hits and visitors with your keywords through search engine optimization (or a PPC program) and then drive them to the right pages with imbedded links or navigational links in your web copy. If your site is large enough, go ahead and install a site search feature.
SEO Copywriting Guidelines include your internal linking and link juice practices by attributing your your highest primary keyword pages additional attention and emphasis not only to attract search engines but more importantly site visits made possible by maintaining high SEO copy writing guidelines standards and principles.
For more Denver SEO Expert tips on seo copywriting and the subject of SEO visit our main business website.
If you intend to create a site that performs and stands out on it's own, then author and publish unique web content that is keyword rich with high relevance to the main topic keywords. Use of industry-related buzz-terms and higher vocabulary terminologies will help with uniqueness.
SEO Copywriting means designing in all three types of content on a single page –for visitors, for keyword rankings in search engines, and for driving your desired call to action and conversions. You want searchers to find your site through SERP hits and web page visits, and then locate the solution to their problem without them having to waste time. If your site looks reputable, has a professional appearance, and gives the visitor what they seek they will absolutely do business with you.
Pull in hits and visitors with your keywords through search engine optimization (or a PPC program) and then drive them to the right pages with imbedded links or navigational links in your web copy. If your site is large enough, go ahead and install a site search feature.
SEO Copywriting Guidelines include your internal linking and link juice practices by attributing your your highest primary keyword pages additional attention and emphasis not only to attract search engines but more importantly site visits made possible by maintaining high SEO copy writing guidelines standards and principles.
Keyword Density and Keyword Prominence
Keyword density on a particular web page should be between 2% to 5% as a rule of thumb. A somewhat higher Keyword Density percentage is acceptable but the higher keyword densities can eventually make reading the page awkward for human visitors, and the keyword density should not reach the level of 5%+ certainly.
Keyword density ratio percentage includes the calculation for both on-page and off-page factors such as image alt tags, title, and metatags, and readable content. After a web page is initially published you can easily spider the page with SEO tools to evaluate density and then make needed adjustments up or down.
Keyword Prominence
Keyword prominence is an attribute that measures the highly emphasized keywords or queries focused upon on that page due to special attributes assigned to the words by web designers. By focusing upon your keywords at the top of the page with multiple occurrences in the top paragraphs and H1 tag for instance, and with larger font and other emphasizing techniques such as underlining, bold, or italics, you can usually achieve a keyword prominence of 60% or higher which is desirable for top level keywords.
Spidering the page with a robot tool will help you identify shortfalls in content such as exceedingly high (or low) keyword density. Web spidering tools also identify useless words such as: you, the, or for, a, with etc which may be edited down in frequency. You want your primary search queries to be denser than useless filler words. Do not try to perfectly design cookie-cutter web pages with perfect keyword density existing on many web pages, or it can be seen as over-optimizing and draw a penalty entitled the OOP or Over Optimization Penalty from major search engines. Mix-up the content design and layout on various web pages so it is less-contrived, your visitors also will appreciate a variety of design elements along with the in-depth professional coverage of the page topic.
Keyword density ratio percentage includes the calculation for both on-page and off-page factors such as image alt tags, title, and metatags, and readable content. After a web page is initially published you can easily spider the page with SEO tools to evaluate density and then make needed adjustments up or down.
Keyword Prominence
Keyword prominence is an attribute that measures the highly emphasized keywords or queries focused upon on that page due to special attributes assigned to the words by web designers. By focusing upon your keywords at the top of the page with multiple occurrences in the top paragraphs and H1 tag for instance, and with larger font and other emphasizing techniques such as underlining, bold, or italics, you can usually achieve a keyword prominence of 60% or higher which is desirable for top level keywords.
Spidering the page with a robot tool will help you identify shortfalls in content such as exceedingly high (or low) keyword density. Web spidering tools also identify useless words such as: you, the, or for, a, with etc which may be edited down in frequency. You want your primary search queries to be denser than useless filler words. Do not try to perfectly design cookie-cutter web pages with perfect keyword density existing on many web pages, or it can be seen as over-optimizing and draw a penalty entitled the OOP or Over Optimization Penalty from major search engines. Mix-up the content design and layout on various web pages so it is less-contrived, your visitors also will appreciate a variety of design elements along with the in-depth professional coverage of the page topic.
Great Web Content
Question: What makes great web site content?
Answer: A lot of hard work!
You should start with the fundamentals of SEO off-page design in the html header information ( title, metatags, H-tags, etc). Keep your code as clean as possible to achieve a low ratio of code to content. Off-page factors also include external links.
All industries that compete online and need marketing advice should contact an advanced SEO consultant firm for immediate support an professional coaching.
It's more expensive but it might make sense to hire a web developer to create W3C Standards Compliant Code. W3C standards compliant code review and corrections services are expensive but would very likely provide you with a competitive advantage and would certainly contribute to a world-class site.
For on-page SEO each web page should have at least 200-300 words (a few hundred words more is good also as long as it's useful and relevant content) preferably in three or more well organized paragraphs with a clear topic of focus in each paragraph. Each block of content should support the top level keyword much the same way as the way an outline does.
Using your keyword plan you should integrate numerous long tail keywords on your web pages supporting your top level keywords, just make sure to not duplicate content on multiple web pages which will confuse the search engines as to which page they should render in results. Navigational links are a minor form of duplicate content.
Duplicate content should be avoided between web pages and can lead to your site's pages ending up in the Google supplemental index which means they’re tucked away and not available in the the main index and SERP results -which is bad. There can be a logical minimal overlap between web pages in your content and links, but, do not optimize for any keyword term(s) on more than one page and be sure to create unique metatags which is often overlooked. A well written paragraph with an H2 tag works perfectly for ranking on long tail keywords, even if the paragraph is far down on the page. I usually have no more than two H2 tag blocks of content on a page.
The most important aspect of your content is to keep it unique and original, next it should be relevant and useful for human visitors. Make sure to include images and professional graphics to make the page attractive and engaging. Online Marketing projects will succeed with keen attention to the details and SEO diligence. Highly relevant content that is well written can do the job nicely along with a professional and diversified link profile.
Answer: A lot of hard work!
You should start with the fundamentals of SEO off-page design in the html header information ( title, metatags, H-tags, etc). Keep your code as clean as possible to achieve a low ratio of code to content. Off-page factors also include external links.
All industries that compete online and need marketing advice should contact an advanced SEO consultant firm for immediate support an professional coaching.
It's more expensive but it might make sense to hire a web developer to create W3C Standards Compliant Code. W3C standards compliant code review and corrections services are expensive but would very likely provide you with a competitive advantage and would certainly contribute to a world-class site.
For on-page SEO each web page should have at least 200-300 words (a few hundred words more is good also as long as it's useful and relevant content) preferably in three or more well organized paragraphs with a clear topic of focus in each paragraph. Each block of content should support the top level keyword much the same way as the way an outline does.
Using your keyword plan you should integrate numerous long tail keywords on your web pages supporting your top level keywords, just make sure to not duplicate content on multiple web pages which will confuse the search engines as to which page they should render in results. Navigational links are a minor form of duplicate content.
Duplicate content should be avoided between web pages and can lead to your site's pages ending up in the Google supplemental index which means they’re tucked away and not available in the the main index and SERP results -which is bad. There can be a logical minimal overlap between web pages in your content and links, but, do not optimize for any keyword term(s) on more than one page and be sure to create unique metatags which is often overlooked. A well written paragraph with an H2 tag works perfectly for ranking on long tail keywords, even if the paragraph is far down on the page. I usually have no more than two H2 tag blocks of content on a page.
The most important aspect of your content is to keep it unique and original, next it should be relevant and useful for human visitors. Make sure to include images and professional graphics to make the page attractive and engaging. Online Marketing projects will succeed with keen attention to the details and SEO diligence. Highly relevant content that is well written can do the job nicely along with a professional and diversified link profile.
Internal Links & Imbedded Web Page Body Copy Links
One of the most underutilized linking practices that can help you move up in the SERPS is Internal Linking or links imbedded in copy which is also known as contextual links. The best link is one that serves multiple objectives thus leveraging the link value due to possessing as many desirable attributes as possible. Since we have complete control of our internal links it makes sense to fully take advantage of multiple feature or multi-purpose links to achieve synergy.
Linking relationships are a critical element needed for high performing websites. Both contextual links in the body of content and interconnecting internal pages can either make or break your web site success.
If your site has three main topics and you have numerous sub-pages associated with broad topic, then make sure to cross-link between all closely associated pages. One to three body of content links is enough -don't overdo internal linking or the human user experience will suffer and they'll abandon your site altogether.
A good site has a consistent design template layout along with a repetitive set of navigational links leading into primary internal pages. Search engines can distinguish between a navigational link (due to duplicate positioning residing on multiple pages of content) and other types of links that are more helpful to achieve your desired search engine marketing goals and objectives. Use your navigational links to get people to the right areas of your site so they can quickly locate content they’re looking for. Design-in links (ie. contextual links) in the body of content to direct visitors to other related-topic web pages or sub-pages.
There can be some overlap in link anchor text between the selected keywords for both the source and destination web pages which makes both pages more relevant. I always make sure that each web page has at least three body of content links, from other internal pages, pointing to them.
One good SEO practice is to always make your internal links absolute value links using the entire http://xxxxx format, versus using relative links having the shortened file extension only.
HTML Site Map and XML Site Maps
All web pages on a site should be listed on an HTML site map page. It is also SEO Best Practice to create an XML sitemap file which can be submitted to Google Webmaster Tools so your freshest content can be indexed immediately. Getting your web pages quickly indexed can help you be identified as the original content author in cases where others are copying or plagiarizing your content.
Linking relationships are a critical element needed for high performing websites. Both contextual links in the body of content and interconnecting internal pages can either make or break your web site success.
If your site has three main topics and you have numerous sub-pages associated with broad topic, then make sure to cross-link between all closely associated pages. One to three body of content links is enough -don't overdo internal linking or the human user experience will suffer and they'll abandon your site altogether.
A good site has a consistent design template layout along with a repetitive set of navigational links leading into primary internal pages. Search engines can distinguish between a navigational link (due to duplicate positioning residing on multiple pages of content) and other types of links that are more helpful to achieve your desired search engine marketing goals and objectives. Use your navigational links to get people to the right areas of your site so they can quickly locate content they’re looking for. Design-in links (ie. contextual links) in the body of content to direct visitors to other related-topic web pages or sub-pages.
There can be some overlap in link anchor text between the selected keywords for both the source and destination web pages which makes both pages more relevant. I always make sure that each web page has at least three body of content links, from other internal pages, pointing to them.
One good SEO practice is to always make your internal links absolute value links using the entire http://xxxxx format, versus using relative links having the shortened file extension only.
HTML Site Map and XML Site Maps
All web pages on a site should be listed on an HTML site map page. It is also SEO Best Practice to create an XML sitemap file which can be submitted to Google Webmaster Tools so your freshest content can be indexed immediately. Getting your web pages quickly indexed can help you be identified as the original content author in cases where others are copying or plagiarizing your content.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
