Part 2: Content Management Systems (CMS)
Part 3: Design
Part 4: Plugins
Most of you might have heard of it, but don't know what it is exactly. The name is pretty obvious and explains what it is about; optimizing your website for search engines.
Having a high rank in Google is like having a store on a A+ location. Most people will only look at the first page of the search results and most of the time they only look at the top3 search results. Of course everybody wants to be in the top 3 and I will describe how you can improve your chance to get in there with your website. In this blog I will be focussing on Google, since it has more than 90% market share in the Netherlands, but most of the tips will work for other search engines as well.
Keywords
The first thing to think of when working on your SEO are the most important keywords for your website. For instance, you have an offline shop for fishing gear in Eindhoven and you want to start a website. Of course you want to be found with the keywords "fishing gear", but there is a lot of competition for these keywords and there are major websites you probably can't beat in the top 3 position. So you're starting to think of other words. When you focus on "fishing gear +eindhoven" there probably is less competition. Try to think from a consumer point of view, what would he type in. Is there a top brand in fishing gear? Then add these to your keywords.Think of things that have to do with fishing; rods, bait, tents.. and include these in your keywords. Combine your keywords with Eindhoven, since customers from New York or even Amsterdam probably won't buy anything in your store.The Google Webmaster tools help you select the right keywords.
Use good titles and headings
Titles and headings are considered very important for a high rank. The most important is your website title. Make sure your website title makes clear to the visitor what the site is about. When your fishing shop is called "Fishy business", your website title might be: "Fishy Business Eindhoven: fishing gear, rods, bait. The best fish supplies." Now you included several important keywords people use when looking for fishing gear, especially in Eindhoven.Paragraph and article headings are important for Google as well. Make sure headings are included in <h1> or <h2> tags. Include your keywords in the heading. Never have a heading like "Welcome to Fishy Business". This isn't relevant to the user, they already know they are at your website and there no keywords are included in the heading.
Think of the keywords when writing content
Include your keywords in the first paragraph of an article, since this is considered the most important part of your text by Google. Make sure the relevant keywords are used on your website. Watch out for overusing keywords. For instance: "I bought my fishing rod in Eindhoven at Fishy Business, they have very good fishing rods in Eindhoven. When it comes to fishing rods, I think they are the best in Noord-Brabant, especially around Eindhoven. The fishing rod I bought was made of aluminum and I used it to fish at the Dommel, which flows through Eindhoven."This makes the text unpleasant to read and Google punishes you for overusing keywords resulting in a lower ranking. A good keyword density is around 3% to 5% of the text, more important is that the text is relevant to the user.
Linkbuilding
One of the most important parts of SEO is linkbuilding. Google thinks that a site which is linked to a lot is relevant to people. When there are a lot of sites linking to your website, you will end up with a higher rank in the search results. The best way to get links to your site is by offering good content. This can be achieved by blogging for instance. When you write relevant posts, people will link to it. Another way is to offer free stuff. You can make wallpapers and have visitors download them for free from your website. This will generate a lot of visitors as well.Make sure that your articles can be shared easily among social networks, this will generate a lot of inbound links. By being active on social networks you can show your expertise and promote your website.
Watch out for link swapping. There are sites which offer you to place a link to your website in exchange for a link to them. Most of the time, these sites have a very low pagerank and this will affect your pagerank as well. A link from a site with a high pagerank is more valuable than a link from a site with a low pagerank. The quality of the link is important. It is better to have 10 links from quality websites with a high pagerank, than 100 links from irrelevant sites.
Anchor text
The anchor text is the text of the link. For instance, I can link to Google with this anchor text: Google, or I can use The best search engine. The second way is better, since it includes keywords. When you can influence the anchor text of the link, please do so. For the fishing shop a good anchor text would be: Rods, bait and fishing gear in Eindhoven.Search Engine Friendly URL's
Google wants your site to be relevant for your visitors and rewards this by ranking your page higher. A good way to get a higher rank in Google is by using search engine friendly (SEF) URL's. In the previous posts you read that I advise you to use a content management system. The downside of most CMS used to be that they generated strange URL's, like: http://future-marketeers.blogspot.com/index.cfml?productid=3&categoryid=5. This URL doesn't tell you what the site is about, so for instance it would be better if it was like: http://future-marketeers.blogspot.com/articles/start-your-own-website-search-engine-optimization/. By using SEF URL's your site will be more relevant, and thus ranked higher. Of course make sure that your keywords are included in the URL.Most modern CMS can handle SEF URL's. In Wordpress the setting is called 'Permalinks'. You can edit the settings to add a category and article title after your URL, for instance: www.example.com/footballplayers/lionelmessi/ if you're writing an article about Lionel Messi. Joomla can handle SEF URL's as well. Look at the picture below to see how you can change the settings in Joomla.
 | ||
| SEF URL settings in Joomla |
 |
| Permalink Settings in Wordpress |
