Your Questions About Search Engine Optimization Techniques

Maya Mendoza answers:

Hi,
Sorry but please check your page the massage display as (404 | Page Not Found!
Sorry, but the page you were looking for is not here.)

Maya Mendoza answers:

You are talking about CMS premade web site systems. These templates are not made for SEO optimization friendliness. They often use a database factor and paramenters that do not do well with rankings, though they can be indexed. They do not offer proper page names, meta tags and so much more. I have had many clients with CMS sites who had many issues and problems as far as ranking, and we developed secondary informational web sites and blogs to help draw traffic.

CMS are wonderful sites for huge ecommerce, but again, there are major issues on the seo side.

Search engine optimization is not rocket science, but it is complex and it is an ongoing process that changes almost daily. There is no such thing as a permanent “fix” to magically send you to the top of the rankings for good. But here are some of the basics to look for when optimizing your site for the first time. There are some real simple things you can ask if they provided. FTp access to web site, not control panel, naming html pages with keywords, static html pages, use of xml sitemaps in root directory, use of h tags, different title and description tags for all pages, static text links, embedded text links and so on.

The Basics of Search Engine Optimization

The fundamental concepts behind Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are understood by most search engine marketers, but those new to the subject should find this article to be very useful. Informative articles on various aspects of SEO have been published here on MarketPosition.com over the years, and in this post I will summarize these concepts and provide links to relevant articles.

Keyword Research
The first step in SEO is to identify the search terms for which you would like your web site to rank well on search engines. We might believe that we know these terms already, but our intuition is often incorrect about how popular or competitive search keywords actually are in reality. People use all kinds of variations of phrases as they are searching for information on the internet. It’s important to identify these terms and use them in your site content exactly as people type them into search engines. To discover what these search terms are, a keyword research tool should be used. There are several free tools available, but most of the robust keyword research tools are subscription based.

Web Site Optimization
You now have your well researched keyword list in hand, and are ready to use the keywords in your web site content. How should these search terms be integrated into your web pages? How often should the phrases be used, and in what sections of the pages? Those are excellent questions and the answers are not known exactly because they depend on the algorithms used by search engines. However, it is generally agreed upon that search engines look at several different sections of a page when evaluating its content:

Title tag
Heading tag
Meta Keyword and Meta Description tags
Text within the Body area
Link text and Link URL
ALT attribute for Image tags (the ALT tag may be less significant than other areas of the page)

Search engines look at the various sections of the document for repeating patterns of keywords or phrases. For this reason, it’s important to have a keyword density within a specific range.

Web Site Design
Aesthetics and user friendliness are important elements of web site design, but there are a number of other things to consider to ensure a web site will be as friendly to search engines as possible.

HTML Validation
It’s important to ensure that the HTML code that makes up a web page is correctly formatted. If there are errors in the code, then search engine spiders may have difficulty indexing the page’s content. Use a HTML Validator to check the formatting of HTML code,

Site Map
It’s always a good idea to create a site map to make it easy for search engine spiders to index the site’s content. Link to every page on the web site that has relevant content, and place a link to the site map on the site’s home page. It may also help to sign up for the Google Sitemaps program to help ensure your content is indexed by Google.

Develop a Site Theme
One aspect of web site design that is often overlooked is theme development. If possible, organize your content so that particular themes are reinforced. Read Reinforcing Ideas and Improving Relevance to Gain Better Rankings for ideas to consider when organizing your site content.

Avoid Duplicate Content
It’s important to avoid duplicating content on the web site.

Comply with Search Engines’ Terms of Service
There are several practices to avoid to stay on good terms with search engines. Techniques like cloaking, hidden text, or spamming, for example, violate search engines’ terms of service. If a site is found to be using these types of blackhat techniques, it will typically be removed from the search engine’s index.

Build Link Popularity
The Link Popularity of a page is a term that refers to the number of other web sites that link to that page. Search engines typically consider how many other sites link to a page as a factor in determining that page’s ranking. The idea behind this is that if others link to a page, then they must consider that page’s content to be valuable in some way. However, all links are not weighted equally and it’s therefore important to try to encourage high quality web sites within your own theme area to link to your site.

Monitor Performance
Once your optimized web site is online, you’ll want to monitor its performance on the search engines. If the site is brand new, it should of course be submitted to the search engines, or perhaps resubmitted if necessary. Monitor the site’s positions on search engines for keywords of interest to identify areas where the site is performing well and areas that can be improved.

A web site that is positioned well in search engines should start receiving a significant number of visitors. To monitor traffic and other useful web site statistics, a web analytics solution such as WebTrends is recommended.

Conclusion
The art of SEO is a set of skills that can be learned and implemented by anybody who manages a web site. However, proper optimization and maintenance of the site requires time and effort, and the fundamental elements of SEO discussed above must be put into practice. Those who find they do not have the time or desire to implement their own SEO program, then hire an SEO Expert who incorporates all of the steps above.

Maya Mendoza answers:

There is so much rubbish and out of date SEO advice on the web that it is very difficult to separate the truth from the fiction unless you are already an expert. For example the above advice contains at least two errors.

Forums are particularly bad because you get every possible shade of opinion and if you are a beginner you have no way of knowing what is correct.

I have found only two up to date, free, high quality tutorials:

http://www.seomoz.org/article/beginners-guide-to-search-engine-optimization

http://www.seo-blog.com/tutorial.php

Maya Mendoza answers:

There are many factors involved, but you can always start with your pages’ meta tags and meta data (key words, descriptions, etc…) and also, the more links search engines find to your site on other relevant sites, the higher the ranking you might be able to get.
There are of course exceptions to the rules.

You can try to pay for it as well, if you want some professional to do it for you.

Http://www.funmediadesign.com

Good Luck

Maya Mendoza answers:

You optimize .php pages the exact same way you optimize .html pages. The search engines NEVER see your PHP code… They see the resulting HTML that gets rendered server-side by the PHP. It’s the HTML that is returned when the crawler requests the page that gets indexed and used for ranking.

As far was “what” to optimize, there is basically two types of optimization… On-page and off-page optimization. On-page optimization means using elements ON the page to help your page rank. Off-page optimization is using elements OFF the page (on other pages of your site as well as on pages on other sites) to help your page rank.

Overall, it is off-page factors that carry the most weight… I.e. Inbound links from other pages using your targeted keyword phrase or slight variations as the link text… Preferably from pages that are relevant to the topic you’re trying to rank for and pages with high PR or link popularity. It’s estimated that off-page factors might influence 70-80% of your overall ranking while on-page factors might influence 20-30% of your overall ranking.

Here’s a quick rundown of on-page factors:

Optimizing the title element is very important since it’s generally the most important on-page ranking factor for most search engines ranking algorithms. The title should target a single keyword phrase (possibly 2-3 IF they are VERY similar… Almost identical in meaning and keywords). Minimize “fluff” words in the title element as they reduce the keyword density within that HTML element and thus make the real keyword phrase(s) you want to rank for seem less important. Put the most important keyword phrase first in the title element if you have multiple keyword phrases in the title. Avoid putting your site name in the title as it only hurts your page’s ability to rank.

The h1 element is generally the 2nd most important on-page ranking factor. It should reinforce the keyword phrase(s) targeted in the title. Since it’s less important from a ranking perspective, it’s ok to add a few fluff words to give it more pazzazz or marketing flair. But again keyword density withing the h1 element does affect rankings slightly. Every page should have a single h1.

The h2 element is generally the 3rd most important on-page ranking factor. If your content lends itself to have sub-headers, then use them… Again targeting keywords from the title element.

Words that are emphasized using bold or strong/italics or em are given a little more weight than words that are not. But I avoid this as it tends to make pages look spammy.

Using keywords that your title is targeting in the page name is also useful. It’s a very minor ranking factor but MOST ranking factors are minor. It’s rarely any single thing that you do that makes a page rank well. It’s the sum of lots of small things that you do that when taken as a whole leads to good rankings.

Optimizing the meta keywords element is virtually worthless. Google and most search engines ignore it in their ranking algorithm because it has been sooooooooooo abused by blackhats and spammers over the last decade. Yahoo! Is still using it to rank pages as Danny Sullivan (a renowned SEO) proved just days after a Yahoo! Exec announced at SMX that Yahoo! Did NOT use it. I include a meta keywords element in all of my pages just for completeness (not for rankings). I use 5-10 keyword phrases and ONLY words/phrases that appear on the page.

The meta description is also ignored by Google and most search engines for the same reason… It is not displayed on the page so it has been abused by spammers and blackhat SEOs. BUT optimizing the meta description element is VERY important since having a good meta description with a call to action can greatly improve click-thru-rate when your page appears in the SERPs and the meta description is shown as the snippet of text for your organic listing. At Google they only show your meta description if all keywords in the user’s search phrase appear in the meta description. So I recommend including all keywords from your title in the meta description since the keyword phrases in the title “should” be the pages most often used to find your page if it is well optimized. This will maximize how often it is shown as the Google snippet.

As far as off-page factors (which are the absolute MOST important ranking factors at almost all engines):

The link text used in hyperlinks pointing to your page give the search engines STRONG clues as to what your page is about. Using “Click here” as link text for a hyperlink is worthless… It only helps you rank for the keyword phrase “click here”. Be very cognizant of how you link to your pages both on your site on from other sites where you might drop a link.

Inbound links from relevant and/or high PR pages on external sites with your targeted keyword phrase (from your page’s title) or slight variations are the MOST important thing you can do to help your page rank for its