I got a real easy question for you....where do I start?
Hello Chris and welcome to the forums,
We have a real easy answer for you ... start at the beginning.
Chris, while that may sound like an obvious answer, the answer is not obvious.
The reason it is not obvious is because if you ask 10 SEOs where to start, the chances are very good that you will get 10 different answers.
Here is our answer.
Start with an overview, much in the same way you would when you sit down to put together a 1000 piece puzzle.
1.) You have an actual picture to look at.
2.) Separate the border pieces from the inner pieces.
3.) Separate the inner pieces by colors.
4.) Put together (interlink) the border pieces first.
5.) Put together (interlink) the remaining inner pieces.
Okay, now let's apply this process to SEO.
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The picture you need to look at here, are the search engines themselves. Now, depending on whose article or ad you've read, you may believe that there are upwards of say, 5000 search engines. This is not true.
There are only these 6 search engines that you really need to know about and learn about.
- Google
http://www.google.com/ http://www.google.com/technology/- FAST/AllTheWeb
http://www.alltheweb.com/ http://www.fastsearc...hnology/atw.asp - Inktomi
http://www.inktomi.c..._inclusion.html- AltaVista
http://www.altavista.com/ http://www.altavista.com/sites/about- Ask Jeeves/Teoma
http://www.askjeeves.com/ http://www.teoma.com/ http://ask.ineedhits.com/- WiseNut
http://www.wisenut.com/ http://www.zeal.com/...directory.jhtml[color=
While the 6 search engines above can be likened to the border pieces of our search engines puzzle, the following search sites can be likened to some of the inner pieces of our search engines puzzle because their search results are related in some way to the 6.
This is not an in-depth look, but merely a quick overview.
- Google powers ... AOL, Yahoo Web Pages (secondary results), Netscape, etc.
- FAST powers ... Lycos
- Inktomi powers ... MSN Web Pages (secondary results), Overture (non PPC results), HotBot, LookSmart (Web Sites from Inktomi)
- WiseNut is owned by ... LookSmart
http://www.sharehold...20408-76372.cfm[color=
This step can be likened to the various "flavors" of results these search engines produce, such as ...
a.) Paid Inclusion (Inclusion Guaranteed) - (All but Google and WiseNut)- FAST - Lycos InSite Select
http://searchservice...searchservices/ - Inktomi - Search Submit & Index Connect
http://www.inktomi.c..._inclusion.html- AltaVista - Express Inclusion
http://www.altavista...s/search/addurl http://www.altavista.com/r?ab1- Ask Jeeves/Teoma - Site Submit
http://ask.ineedhits.com/b.) Paid Placement (Inclusion & Ranking Guaranteed - Pay Per Click) - (Google, FAST)- Google - AdWords Select
https://adwords.google.com/select/ - FAST - Lycos InSite AdBuyer
http://searchservice...searchservices/ PLEASE NOTE: Overture
http://www.overture.com/ (although not a true search engine (spider based) but a Pay Per Click type search site) has formed partnerships with some of the above search engines and a "top three" listing with them will result in a "sponsored" listing which are usually placed before the actual free or "editorial" listings.
This is an excellent way to get immediate traffic to your Website and a good way to test your various keywords for ROI.
c.) Free Placement (Inclusion Not Guaranteed) (All)While the "conventional" wisdom is to submit your site and all its pages to the search engines' "Add URL" page, either manually or automatically with special software or Web programs, our advice is to NOT submit your site and its pages at all.
The reason is simple. The search engines don't pay any attention to the pages submitted this way anymore. They used to, but not anymore and many SEOs and would-be SEOs are still writing articles and advocating this obsolete method of getting your Website listed. This information is outdated and useless.
So why do the search engines still have these "Add URL" pages. Simple, because people expect them and they need the opportunity to submit their pages and the certain amount of "security" they feel when doing so. Just think of all the eMail the engines would receive every day if they were to eliminate these pages.
The reason the search engines don't use the pages submitted this way anymore is because of SPAM.
A spokesperson for AltaVista has been quoted as saying that 90% of all the pages submitted via the "Add URL" pages are SPAM. If you will just stop and really think about that for a moment, you will soon realize that since they don't want SPAM in their databases, the best way to keep it out is to not index it in the first place.
Also a spokesperson for AllTheWeb has been quoted as saying that AlltheWeb actually crawls 5-6 billion pages, and only indexes just over 2.1 billion pages. The difference is that the other pages do not contain quality material.
In our opinion it would be logical that the other engines would experience similar situations.
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Now that you know which search engines are the border pieces, make sure you get lots of links from other pages that are already listed in these engines, and preferably from the highest ranking ones that are related to your topic or keywords.
Our advice, to give you the best possible opportunity of being indexed in all of the search engines for free, is to create unique content pages with keyword rich text and to inform as many other sites about them so that they will want to link to them with your specific keywords in the Anchor Tag Text.
This will accomplish two very important things for you ...
1.) Get your pages listed in all the search engines.
2.) Get your pages high rankings in all the search engines.
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There is another aspect that we'll end with that would involved the non search engine sites. They are called directories. Newbies usually use the term "search engine" to include these types of sites, but they are actually directories built by human beings and not by robot spiders like the search engines. These directories include Yahoo, DMOZ and LookSmart.
- Yahoo - Free - For Non Commercial Sites
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/ - Yahoo - Fee - US$299.00 non-refundable, recurring annual fee - Yahoo! Express 7-Day Guarantee
... Required for commercial listings but available for any site
... Guaranteed and expedited consideration of your site within 7 business days
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/ http://add.yahoo.com/fast/add?335416- DMOZ - Free - The ODP is maintained by community editors who evaluate sites for inclusion in the directory. They are our experts, and all submissions are subject to editor evaluation.
http://www.dmoz.org/add.html- LookSmart - Free - For Non Commercial Sites
http://www.zeal.com/- LookSmart - Fee - $49 Set Up Fee Plus $0.15 Per Click Through - Look Listings
... Submit your Website to target customers at the very moment they are searching for what you sell.
... Pay only when a potential customer clicks on your listing.
... Unused funds carry over and are refundable. Cancel any time.
... Your listing manages itself according to your targets. No need to continually monitor a bid or placement.
http://listings.look...e&chan=lshomepg[color=
This is a good place to start ...
http://www.bruceclay...enginechart.pdf[color=
Since this is my first post I will give you a brief (yea right) rundown on things. I have been making web pages for about 4 yrs now. Nothing big, just for peoples weddings or for a friends online game site. Stuff like that. Well no one told me you could make money doing this. So I have a friend who's Boss wanted a web site built for his real estate company. I built him a page (Still building), however I knew that I would need to get him on the Web for his site to succeed. So I looked all over and some of these place who want to list websites for search engines can go into the thousands. WOW.
Chris, don't be fooled by these types of ads and this type of hype. As we just pointed out, forget about the 1000's of so-called search engines and only concentrate on the real ones.
So I stumbled upon Webposition Gold. Well it sounds great on paper, but the jest of it is I have no idea what I am doing. I am as newbie as it gets.
Well, then here is our advice for Newbies about automated SEO software. Set it aside and forget about it. Learn all you can from the ethical and knowledgeable SEOs on the SEO forums and SEO newsletters that abound.
But I cannot figure this stuff out for the life of me. HELP! I really need to know how and where to start. Any info (No matter how simple) would be greatly appreciated.
Chris, we certainly hear your pain and your frustration.
You will do just fine as long as you keep ONE very important aspect about SEO in mind and that is that ...
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Don't expect results like high rankings right away (unless you pay for them on a PPC) but just keep acquiring links to your wonderful and unique resource pages that you are now contemplating, so that everyone who has related pages will WANT to link to it to benefit their own visitors as well as enhance their own site by pointing to such an authoritative page, and all without you having to link back to them. This is this key to getting and being properly linked.
I will be here very often.
That's important, stay in the loop, and keep up with all the vital changes that take place almost hourly. Well maybe not that often, but it could feel like it if you lose touch.
P.S. (Hey look a specific question): How does the payment to the search engines work? Which engines do you pay for? How are you billed? Do you need to sign up on the engine then upload your "Optimized pages" (However the hell you optimize a page)?
Chris, just follow the above links we've provided and all your questions will be answered.
Now, as far as actually optimizing for "On The Page" ranking criteria, here is what we recommend.
We highly recommend that you include a robots.txt and that you include a Site Map page so that the spiders can easily find all your pages.
Information about the robots.txt file
http://www.robotstxt...sion-admin.htmlFor more information ... Standard For Robot Exclusion
http://www.robotstxt.../wc/robots.htmlPlace your robots.txt file in your root directory, like this ...
http://www.your-domain.com/robots.txtThe robots.txt file will allow all the spiders to properly crawl your pages.
If you want EVERYTHING spidered, then use the following syntax ...
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This one allows all robots to index everything. The asterisk (*) in
the User-agent field allows "all robots" in and because nothing is
disallowed, everything is allowed.
User-agent: *
Disallow:
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This one keeps all robots out.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
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This one keeps all robots out of the cgi-bin and images directories:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin
Disallow: /images
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One of the main reasons a Web page doesn't rank well is because the keyword density is too low (or too high). A good rule of thumb starting point is to start with a keyword density of around 7%. (Please Note: Since SEO is NOT an exact science, this percentage will be different between the various search engines as well as the various keywords themselves. SEO is a lot like the card game Bridge, in that certain SEO techniques will TRUMP other SEO techniques and they will vary from page to page.)
The important thing to recognize when writing copy to be search engine friendly is that you must address BOTH the search engines and your potential customer/client.
If you concentrate only upon the search engines and get your keywords precisely at the desired density that you know will be effective to rank your page high in the results, but when folks begin to read your copy, it makes very little sense to them or worse, it doesn't grab or hold their interest, then you have not accomplished your end result, which is both a high ranked page so folks will click through to your page and then to also present them with compelling copy that will lead to them making a purchase.
Getting people to your page is only the FIRST part of the equation. The SECOND part is making the sale.
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Then, not only is it important to get the proper density for your keywords, but the location, order and proximity are all very essential to a high ranking as well.
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You do know that the Meta Keywords Tag is utterly USELESS (except for Inktomi) right?
You do know that the Meta Description Tag is utterly USELESS for Google right?
Now, while you should still OPTIMIZE these two Meta Tags, just make sure your expectations of what they will and will not do for ranking consideration is firmly a part of your overall understanding of SEO.
Just FYI, here is what we recommend you place in the Head Tag <head> ...
<head>
<title>your 3-word phrase (then add compelling copy)</title>
<meta name="keywords" content="your 3-word phrase">
<meta name="description" content="use compelling copy">
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow">
<meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="true">
<meta http-equiv="content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<link href=/my-various-code.js type=text/css rel=stylesheet>
<script language="JavaScript" src="/my-various-code.js"></script>
</head>
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It never ceases to amaze us how many people don't have any concept of how important this particular tag is. As far as "On The Page" ranking criteria goes, it is the
This is not an optimized example ...
<title>your company name home page</title>
This is ...
<title>your 3-word phrase (then add compelling copy)</title>
This IS the very first line that people see when your listing appears in the search engines.
What you put here should be the deciding factor for your visitor to click on your listing over all the others shown, so write your copy accordingly. Don't use hype or just a list of keywords, but rather use what you want people to type into the search engines to find this page, then add some compelling copy to get them to click through.
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We recommend that your URL Name & File Name MATCH your HTML Title Tag. The reason is because you then make it EASY for folks to know how to link back to your page. If they insert the proper keywords in the Anchor Tag Text of the Backward Link they create, it will help boost your ranking consideration and then eventually get your page to the
<title>Hampden Maine Real Estate Listings - 1-800-123-456-7890 - Owner's Name</title>
http://www.maine-rea...e-listings.com/Now, if you attain a
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real estate 18325
real estate listings 6529
maine real estate 1490
Source:
http://www.wordtracker.com/---
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This is the
Research words that will bring you "buyers" and not just "visitors" or the more aptly named, "looky-loo" ... You want folks who are coming to "buy" your product(s) or service(s), so use keywords to target and attract them only. So optimize for specific terms and not general ones.
For example, don't just optimize for "baby clothes", but for "baby clothes 2T" or "baby clothes girls 2T"
Many SEO professionals who monitor statistics for their clients will give them monthly reports that in our opinion are useless, like how many "unique visitors" they received or what this keyword and that keyword ranks in the results pages.
Those numbers would really be useful if they also included the number and amount of sales that were a direct result of those stats.
For instance, if our SEO told us that we ranked
We mention this because we believe that most business owners have the concept that if their keyword is ranked at
And not only are such stats important to know for the SAME search engine, but also for various search engines.
For example, a
These are the type of statistics that would be useful and important to SEO clients, right? Make it a point to keep track of these factors right from the beginning of your SEO campaign.
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The best place to put your Heading Tag is right after the Body Tag <body> like this ...
<h1>Your Keywords</h1>
Also place a Heading Tag in the middle of your page and you could place one at the end if your page is about 600 words or around 9k in size or larger.
Sprinkle your keywords in Bold Text throughout like this ...
<b>Your Keywords</b>
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Whenever possible use Text Links to your interior pages or back to your Home Page, but if you insist on image links then be sure to include an ALT Tag like this ...
<a href="http://www.your-domain.com/"><img src=logo.gif alt="This Is ALT Tag Text"></a>
This is what Craig Silverstein, Chief Technology Officer of Google has to say about ALT Tags ...
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ALT Tags
For companies who have built Websites without much text where the copy is represented in the graphics Craig suggests that they employ the ALT tags and either re-create the body copy contained in the graphics in the ALT tags and attempt to describe the "concepts" depicted in the graphics.
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Our advice is that you really do not need to optimize your pages differently for this or that search engine even though they use different algorithms to rank their pages. This way of optimization was advised and advantageous at one time (years ago), but is no longer the case. In fact, you may still find and read other outdated SEO advice, here and there on various Webpages or in various eZines and Newsletters, so be very careful what you consider to be good and useful advice. Some of it may get your pages into real trouble.
We know that once you have optimized your pages "perfectly" for Google FIRST, and they then begin to increase in the rankings each and every month, that all of your rankings on the other search engines will begin to increase as well.
Just be diligent and be patient and most of all ...
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Chris, in conclusion, if we have confused you in any way or brought some questions to mind, please don't hesitate to ask them, as we'll be glad to answer them for you.
Happy SEOing,
Your Friends,
Sharon & Roy
Since this is my first post I will give you a brief(yea right) rundown on things. I have been making web pages for about 4 yrs now. Nothing big, just for peoples weddings or for a friends online game site. Stuff like that. Well no one told me you could make money doing this :roll: . So I have a friend who's Boss wanted a web site built for his real estate company. I built him a page(Still building), however I knew that I would need to get him on the web for his site to succeed. So I looked all over and some of these place who want to list websites for search engines can go into the thousands. WOW. So I stumbled apon WebpositionGold. Well it sounds great on paper, but the jest of it is I have no idea what I am doing. I am as newbie as it gets. I can walk you threw every OS there is. Dreamweaver, Photoshop, No Prob. But I cannot figure this stuff out for the life of me. HELP! I really need to know how and where to start. Any info (No matter how simple) would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for reading this longggggggg message. Great site. Thanks. I will be here very often.
