The Learning Center

This section is designed to bring people up to date on Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. All of the information here is a basic representation of what is generally know about SEO. It is built upon two years of research and full time work in dealing with search engine optimization. We hope it helps you to prosper with your business.

Keywords

If you don't know exactly what it is your prospective clients are typing into the search engines, you're flying blind. Good thing there's SEO radar.

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

This link will bring up a white window with a little box that says Get suggestions for: and an input box. If you type something into the box like “tourism” without the quotes it will bring up a list of every keyword that gets typed into the search engines that has anything with the word tourism in it. It may take a few seconds to bring up the information.

The list that comes up shows what month in blue the below information was taken for. It will always be one month behind as it needs a full month to calculate the info. On the next line it shows the count and then search term. For tourism in October, the count is 54676. This means that in October of 2004, the keyword tourism was typed into the search engines 54,676 times.

What search engines does it tell you about? It includes Yahoo, Msn, and a host of smaller search engines including Overture. It does not however include Google. There is a lot of speculation on how many times things get typed into Google as there is no software like this to determine the Google searches. Some people double the numbers here to show Google, some keywords can be more, some are much less.

For a broader look at things, let's go to www.digitalpoint.com . There are many useful tools here that will be described later. For keywords suggestions go to the free tools section, and then halfway down the list is the keyword suggestion tool. When you get to that page, near the bottom is a box with Phrase next to it. Type in tourism again.

The page will refresh and ask you to type in a number with letters in it. This will only occur once. It's to keep automated queries out of the system. Leaving the "Market" set to United States will give you the numbers for North America . Once that has been done the page will refresh again with your results. This page now shows the Overture results from the software described above, as well as the word tracker results. To find out more about word tracker go to www.wordtracker.com .

This is just a way to find out other keywords that get typed into the search engines, though word tracker does not track everything that gets type in, it does include Google, but may only show 1 tenth of the actual number that gets typed in. All this shows is the other possibilities that Overture may not have picked up.

As a general rule, follow the numbers on Overture, and use word tracker as another way to find other keywords.

If you click the second result on either Word Tracker or Overture, it will give you the results for the keyword you clicked meaning it will show you what gets keywords there are that have the phrase you clicked on in it.

Titles

Titles are the first thing your users and the search engines are going to look at. It's the one thing will describe the entire page. It's also considered to be the most important thing you can optimize on your website and is part of the term called Onpage, which will be explained later.

How long should your title be?

This depends on first, your content. If there are a lot of different topics on your page, then your title should be longer because of the different keywords that you will want in your title. The maximum length should be no more than 90 Characters.

Search Engine Optimization by Tourism Webmasters

As an example, the above title is only 48 Characters. 90 Characters is quite long and the reason you don't want to have too long of a title is “Dilution”.

Dilution means that the more words you have in your title, the less importance you give to each word.

So how do we edit our titles?

It depends on what software you use to edit your web pages. Most editing software like Macromedia Dreameaver will have a section at the top of the page where you can simply write in what you want your title to say. If you edit with just html, the title tag will look like this:

<TITLE> Search Engine Optimization by Tourism Webmasters</TITLE>

Your title should NOT be the same for each page of your site. Your content (the words on the page) is going to be different for each page and so should your titles. It's also an opportunity to get extra keywords in and to optimize each page for a different set of keywords.

The basic rules to title optimization:

•  Do not exceed 90 – 100 Characters.

•  Stay to the point of the content on the page, using keywords in your title that are not on your site is spam and you can be removed from the listings if someone complains.

•  Use a different title for each page.

•  Try to use about three different keywords in your title, but no more. The most relevant to the page should come first.

Content

Content is simply the words or text on a page versus the graphics and structure of a website. All search engines love content, it's the one thing they are trying to find for their users or searchers. They want to find the best content on the internet for certain keywords.

Keyword Loading

This term is also known to most people as spam.

When you find a webpage about kayaking and it looks like this:

Kayaking is when you take a kayak boat and go kayaking on a lake, kayaking on a river, kayaking on the ocean or just kayaking in general. Kayaking is a lot of fun I like kayaking.

No user on the internet wants to read a paragraph that looks like that other than to have a laugh. It USED to get you high rankings in the search engines. Not anymore.

If a user or searcher wants to read a paragraph about kayaking, it would most likely contain the word at least once and Google knows this. It also knows that it should not have to word too many times. The key here is to include the word, but not to have it all over the place, it's just to obvious. So how to we write our content then?

Simple, write your content as though the search engines DO NOT EXIST. That is the exact type of content that the major search engines are looking for.

As a general rule, content should have a heading and a paragraph like this.

If your paragraph is about Mountain Biking on Vancouver Island , your heading should be:

Mountain Biking on Vancouver Island

Mywebsite.com is offering some of the best mountain biking for Vancouver Island . The different packages start at 3 hour tours and go up to 7 hours depending on how long you have. Take a tour of some of the most amazing area on the island. Our guides will take you to the extreme or show you some of the best casual riding areas imaginable.

That is all the optimization you will need if you are looking to rank for the words

Mountain Biking Vancouver Island

The next step would be to get links pointing at your site with anchor text:

Mountain Biking Vancouver Island

On Page and Offpage

The term "On Page" refers to optimizing the content ON you Page. It means to change keywords, titles, descriptions as well as the headings and paragraphs on your page so that the search engines will rank you higher for the keywords you want.

The term "Off Page" refers to all optimization efforts that do not change anything on your page. This is done through obtaining links that are pointing to your site. It also means optimizing the anchor text you use for those links (explained in the anchor text section).

For information on optimization of your pages, please go to the "Titles" section and "Content" section.

For "Off Page" optimization please go to the "Links" section.

Getting listed in the major search engines

To get your site listed, the best way possible is to have numerous links pointing at your website. If you're not sure what it means when a link is pointing at your site please see the links section of this tutorial.

The internet is built upon computers linking to each other. It's the same thing with the internet and search engines. To get listed in Google you can go to the submission form to submit your website much there is a much better way.

If a website that is listed in Google and has decent PR or Page Rank (see the Google section for info on PR) and it links to your website, Google will find the link and follow it to your website. The spider (also found in the Google section) will look at your website and place what is called a cache of your site into its listing. Depending on the amount of PR that was on the page linking to you, it will take anywhere from a few hours, to a few weeks to get listed.

RECAP:

If site A is listed in Google and has a link that points to site B which is not in Google, site B will be included in Google in a few hours, or a few weeks.

The higher the PR of the page that is linking to you, the faster the link to your site will be found. So if a page has PR 2 it will not get you listed in Google as fast as a page with PR 7.

How do I get links? You can submit your website to directories or do link exchanges. More info is available in the link building section of this tutorial.

How do I know how much PR a page has? This is answered in the Google section of this tutorial.

This theory also applies to Yahoo and MSN, Yahoo has a version of PR called Webrank that has not been officially released yet. To get listed in these two search engines you need links pointing to you website, the more the better.

Links

A link is a connection between two websites. It is the button, image or underlined text that once clicked, takes you to another page, whether inside the same website, or to an external website.

A text link is a word or set of words that is usually blue and underlined and once clicked, takes you to another page which again is either to another page of the website, or to another website.

Example:

Tourism Webmasters is now offering a free forum to learn about search engine optimization.

The link in the above section is the underlined part reading "free forum". In this example it is also a "text link" meaning the link is text based. This is what search engines use to find other websites. If you were to click on "free forum" you would be taken to the Tourism Webmasters homepage.

Another term to mention here is "anchor text" which is explained in another chapter.

What does the above link look like to search engines?

<p> Tourism Webmasters is now offering a <a href="http://www.tourismwebmasters.com">free forum</a> to learn about search engine optimization.</p>

The text link part is made up of this:

<a href="http://www.tourismwebmasters.com">free forum</a>

It is the most important part of a link and is the best way to get listed in search engines (explained in "Getting Listed") as well as the most important part of getting ranked highly for certain keywords (explained in "Gaining Rankings".

Where ever you see <a href=" it means it is a link to another page or website. The next part, http://www.tourismwebmasters.com is what tells you where the link is going. It can also look like http://www.tourismwebmasters.com/contact.php which will take you to the contact section of Tourism Webmasters. The section >free forum</a> is the anchor text, again this is explained in “Anchor Text”.

Graphic links vs Text Links.

A graphic link is when you have an image that when clicked will take you to another webpage or website. Search engines can follow this link but it will not give you the added benefit of the anchor text. Graphics tend to get more attention of the users and you can get traffic that way but as far as search engine optimization goes, text links will have much more benefit to gaining rankings.

Anchor Text

<a href="http://www.tourismwebmasters.com">Free Forum</a>

Free Forum

In this above example, the html code will look exactly like the blue underlined section once placed on a web page.

In the code:

<a href="http://www.tourismwebmasters.com"> Free Forum </a>

The bold section is the anchor text.

Here again:

Free Forum

The two words that are underlined (Free Forum) are also called anchor text. When a search engine like Google comes along and sees this text, it will follow the link, and give whatever page it lands on a credit or points for the words free and forum. The more websites you have linking to you with this anchor text, the higher you will rank in the results for every time someone types in free forum as a search. It will also give you points for the words free and forum separately.

If you have two different links pointing at your site:

Sea Kayaking

And

Vancouver Island Kayaking

For those two links you will get:

Sea 1 point

Kayaking 2 points

Vancouver 1 point

Island 1 point

Although the exact formula is not known, a points system was used for this as an example only. The main thing to know here is that the more unique websites or different websites that you have linking to your site, the higher you will rank for the anchor text used. If you have a lot of links coming in with "Sea Kayaking" used as the anchor text, you will rank quite well for when someone does a search for sea kayaking.

As an example of how well this works. Open up a new window and go to www.google.com .

Do a search for the words "miserable failure" without using the quotes. The first website to show up in the results is the biography of President Bush. This is because a large number of websites are pointing links at that page with the anchor text of “miserable failure”. You will notice that there are no words on the page or in the title that have miserable or failure either placed together or separately. They simply do not exist on the page. It's the anchor text of the incoming links that make that page rank so well.

What is an incoming link vs an outgoing or outbound link?

www.site1.com has a link on the page that lands on www.site2.com

This means that site2 has and incoming link and site1 has an outbound link.

Internal links vs external links.

An internal link is simply a link that goes from one page to another, but is contained in the same website. It does not leave the site.

www.domain.com links to www.domain.com/resources.html

This is an internal link, it stays within the same website, an external link is when www.site1.com links to www.site2.com .

Google Information

Google, at the time of this writing, is the leading search engine on the internet. It is said that Google will provide 50 – 70 % of all searches on the net.

To get listed in Google please see the "Getting Listed" section.

PR or Page Rank.
PR is short for Page Rank and will be used for the remainder of this tutorial.

A website that shows PR of 1 or higher IS listed in Google

The most important tool is the Google toolbar. This toolbar can be found here:

www.toolbar.google.com

On the right hand side of the screen there is a download button. The toolbar is a very small program and is very easy to use. It will install a small line at the top of internet explorer and will say Google on it. You will see a picture of it at the Google download page. To use it, the first thing you must do once it is installed is to click on options, then make sure there is a check mark next to a little blue circle with a white, small "I" not a capital I. it also says "page info menu". Next click on apply and then okay.

Types of Web Pages

There are a few different types of web pages that you should be aware of as some will not be able to get listed in the search engines.

A static page is the best way to build to your site on a search engine stand point. A static page is the most commonly used type on the internet and looks like this:

http://www.tourismwebmasters.com/index.php

The page file name is index.html, a static page can end in .html, .htm, .php, .asp, .inc and a host of others.

Compare this to dynamic pages which are created by software and databases. A dynamic page can look like this:

http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=224203&sid=cb5a9ea889309e3284f89cb75c188821

This is a forum page on www.phpbb.com . The forum will generate pages that the user has created. This type of page is not spiderable by the search engines. There is a way to make this type of page spiderable by doing something called mod_rewrite, which is what has been done to the Tourism Webmasters forum, the pages now look like this:

http://www.tourismwebmasters.com/forum/ftopic1.html

Another type of webpage to know about is frames. There is a lot of debate at the moment as to whether or not Google can read frames. For the time being it is not recommended as it is possible for the search engines to read the content and links, but not possible to cache the page, meaning your page will not be listed in the results.

White Hat Black Hat

This term is the difference between someone who doesn't care about that it takes to get the number one spot in the search engines, usually Google and someone who follows the rules.

This is Taken from Google's website here is the link:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

Quality Guidelines - Specific recommendations:

• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
• Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
• Don't send automated queries to Google.
• Don't load pages with irrelevant words.
• Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
• Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

These quality guidelines cover the most common forms of deceptive or manipulative behavior, but Google may respond negatively to other misleading practices not listed here, (e.g. tricking users by registering misspellings of well-known web sites). It's not safe to assume that just because a specific deceptive technique isn't included on this page, Google approves of it. Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles listed above will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit.

End of Google article

So are we allowed to optimize our websites for Google? Of course, here is what they have to say.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html

For basic info about Google, they have a webmaster section here:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/