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Steps To A Well Optimized Website!
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Date: March 23, 2005.
This article will discuss your website's internal linking structure and the role that it plays in ranking highly, and in ranking for multiple phrases. While this aspect is not necessarily the single most important of the ten steps it can be the difference between first page and second page rankings, and can make all the difference in the world when you are trying to rank your website for multiple phrases.
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Step One - Keyword Selection
Arguably, keyword selection is the single most important stage in the entire optimization process. If you do not choose the correct keyword phrases you will not maximize your ROI on this campaign. I mention ROI and use it as a reminder that keyword selection is not necessarily about looking for the most searched phrases. A profitable optimization is one which produces the greatest return on investment for the time and money that are available to put towards it.
Bigger Is Not Always Better
If you are a web designer in Seattle who has just started your own business, you could make "web design" the targeted keyword phrase for your site as it certainly has the highest number of searches with 707,962 in September 2004 according to the "Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool". If you have thousands of dollars and many months to dedicate just to attaining those rankings it could be done however, would that be the best use of your time? Alternatively you could target "seattle web site design" with 5,070 searches in September. A Google link check shows the number of links for the top three competitors for the Seattle search had 132, 21, and 47 respectively whereas for "web design" the top three had 18,700, 5,420, and 1,310 incoming links each.
With a good site you would get more work than you could handle with 5,070 searches on Overture alone if you were ranking well on the major search engines. This would clearly provide the highest return on investment for the small business owner who most certainly does not have the time and money available to target "web design" and who wouldn't have the manpower to take advantage of the rankings even if they were attained.
This is an extreme example however it clearly illustrates that sometimes the phrase with the highest number of searches is not necessarily the best target for your business.
Phrases That Sell
Another consideration you will want to make when choosing your keyword phrases is whether or not they are "buy phrases". Phrases with a high number of searches that are not "buy phrases" will tend to bring a lot of traffic, however the conversion ratio will be far lower. Should you choose to target "buy phrases" you may not get the same number of visitors however your ratio of visitors to sales will be much higher.
In this example let's assume you are the marketing director for a well-known accounting company. There will be many choices you can make for your targeted keyword phrase. The top searched phrases in September 2004 that were accounting-related are:
"accounting" with 156,095 searches
"accounting software" with 54,621 searches
"accounting job" with 32,015 searches
"accounting services" with 19,260 searches
"accounting firm" with 13,089 searchesMany might go with their gut instinct and attempt to target "accounting". The problem with this phrase (other than the competition for it) is that the people doing that search are not necessarily even looking for an accounting firm. They may be accounting students, small business owners not interested in hiring an accountant but just looking for tax information, etc. "Accounting software" and "accounting job" are irrelevant, which leaves us with "accounting services" and "accounting firm" as the two main options.
From this point an evaluation of competition should be performed and the pros and cons of making each the primary target should be weighed based on the amount of work it will take to attain the phrase vs. how many searches there are for that phrase.
Often promotions that target multiple "buy phrases" will end up far more successful that those targeting phrases based solely on the number of searches due to the increased conversions and generally decreased competition.
Tools To Use
Armed now with knowledge on how to recognize and choose between different phrases there remains only one question, how do you know which phrases are even searched? Fortunately there are a couple great resources out there to help you find out how many searches are performed for specific phrases. They Are:
The Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool
A decent tool for researching keyword phrases. It indicates which phrases had the highest numbers of searches on Overture during the previous month. The biggest weakness it has, as far as applying it to the natural search engines, is that Overture counts singular and plural as the same and also corrects misspelling so the totals are all lumped together in this tool whereas on the natural engines they are considered differently.
WordTracker is very similar to Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool except that this tool differentiates between plural and singular searches, does not correct spelling (i.e. it gives the number of searches for misspellings rather than correcting them and giving a total for correct and misspelled words) and gives the results in predicted numbers of searches over all the engines per day rather than just one engine over a month.
They have a great free trial that doesn't give you as many results but which can be very useful.
To start with Google AdWords Keyword Tool will help you get ideas for new keywords that can help you improve your ad relevance.
When using these tools I recommend beginning with the Overture Search term Suggestion Tool and once you've narrowed down your choices, switch to WordTracker to insure that you're getting the right information in regards to tense (singular vs. plural) and also that the numbers match. Sometimes you will find that the numbers are completely different from each tool. In this event you will have to use your best judgment.
Don't forget to check misspellings when using WordTracker!
Tips & Tricks
There are no real "tricks" to uncovering the keywords you should target however there are a few tips. A few pointers that will help you maximize your keyword selection:
Think like a layman. Just because you know your industry terms doesn't mean that everyone does. Don't just think of the words you use to describe your products/services, think of the words you would use if you knew nothing about it other than the fact that you needed it. You may want to recruit a friend and have them run some searches for you.
Think like an expert. On the other side of the coin, there may be phrases used specifically in your industry that people "in the know" would use to search for your products and/or services. Be sure to look into these phrases. You just may find some hidden gems that no one else has thought to target.
Don't target too many phrases. Some SEOs and webmasters target dozens and sometimes even hundreds of phrases. The end result, they often miss the ones they most wanted to attain. Keeping yourself and your keyword list focused will keep your site focused. If your site is focused you'll rank higher for the phrases that will produce the highest return on investment.
Testing
Test your phrases. If there is any debate about whether a search phrase is worth targeting it's often a good idea to test the conversions through pay-per-click engines. Set up an account with a PPC engine and bid on the phrases that you would like to target.
You have to remember that the PPC engines do not provide for the same amount of traffic as the natural engines. Test the initial phrases, test alternative phrases, and see which produce the best results. Something else to keep in mind is that PPC are not natural engines. If your ROI is not as high on more costly phrases that doesn't mean they won't produce the higher return on the natural engines where a top ranking does not cost money per click.
In the end you will have confirmed a solid list of keyword phrases and if the PPC campaign is providing a good return on investment you might as well keep it running and enjoy the "bonus" traffic that it provides.
Step Five - Internal Linking
With all the talk out there about linking, one might be under the impression that the only links that count are those from other websites. While these links certainly play an important role (as will be discussed in part eight of this series) these are certainly not the only important links.
When you're about to launch into your link work why not stop and consider the ones that are easiest to attain and maximize first. That would be, the ones right there on your own site and those which you have total and complete control of. Properly used internal links can be a useful weapon in your SEO arsenal.
The internal linking structure can:
1. Insure that your website gets properly spidered and that all pages are found by the search engines.
2. Build the relevancy of a page to a keyword phrase.
3. Increase the PageRank of an internal page.Below is how the internal linking structure can affect these areas and how to maximize the effectiveness of the internal linking on your own website.
Getting Your Website Spidered
Insuring that every page of your website gets found by the search engine spiders is probably the simplest thing you can do for your rankings. Not only will this increase the number of pages that a search engine credits your site with, but it also increases the number of phrases that your website has the potential to rank for.
I have seen websites that, once the search engines find all of their pages, find that they are ranking on the first page and seeing traffïc from phrases they never thought to even research or target.
This may not necessarily be the case for you. However, having a larger site with more pages related to your content will boost the value of your site overall. You are offering this content to your visitors, so why hide it from the search engines.
Pages can be hidden from search engines if the linking is done in a way that they cannot read. This is the case in many navigation scripts. If your site uses a script-based navigation system then you will want to consider the implementation of one of the internal linking structures noted further in the article.
Additionally, although image-based navigation is spiderable, the search engines can't see what an image is and thus, cannot assign any relevancy from an image to the page it links to other than assigning it a place in your website hierarchy.
Building The Relevancy Of A Page To A Keyword Phrase
Anyone who wants to get their website into the top positions on the search engines for multiple phrases must start out with a clearly defined objective, including which pages should rank for which phrases. Generally speaking, it will be your homepage that you will use to target your most competitive phrase and move on to targeting less competitive phrases on your internal pages.
To help build the relevancy of a page to a keyword phrase you will want to use the keyword phrase in the anchor text of the links to that page. Let's assume that you have a website hostïng company. Rather than linking to your homepage with the anchor text "home" link to it with the text "web hostïng main". This will attach the words "web" and "hostïng" and "main" to your homepage. You can obviously leave the word "main" out, however, in many cases it does work for the visitor (you know, those people you're actually building the site for).
This doesn't stop at the homepage. If you are linking to internal pages either through your navigation, footers, or inline text links - try to use the phrases that you would want to target on those pages as the linking text. For example, if that hostïng company offered and wanted to target "dedicated hostïng", rather than leaving the link at solely the beautiful graphic in the middle of the homepage they would want to include a text link with the anchor text "dedicated hostïng" and link to this internal page. This will tie the keywords "dedicated hostïng" to the page.
In a field as competitive as hostïng this alone won't launch the site to the top ten. It will, however, give it a boost and in SEO, especially for competitive phrases, every advantage you can give your site counts.
Increasing The PageRank Of Internal Pages
While we will be discussing PageRank (a Google-based term), the same rules generally apply for the other engines. The closer a page is in clicks from your homepage, the higher the value (or PageRank) the page is assigned. Basically, if I have a page linked to from my homepage, it will be given more weïght that a page that is four or five levels deep in my site.
This does not mean that you should link to all of your pages from your homepage. Not only does this diffuse the weïght of each individual link, but it will look incredibly unattractive if your site is significantly large.
Figure out what your main phrases are and which pages will be used to rank for them and be sure to include text links to these internal pages on your homepage. It's important to pick solid pages to target keyword phrases on because you don't want human visitors going to your "terms and conditions" page before they've even seen the products.
If that hostïng company noted above has a PageRank 6 homepage, the pages linked from its homepage will generally be a PageRank 5 (sometimes 4, sometimes 6 depending on the weïght of the 6 for the homepage). Regardless, it will be significantly higher than if that page was linked to from a PageRank 3 internal page.
How To Improve Your Internal Linking Structure
There are many methods you can use to improve your internal linking structure. The three main ones are:
1. Text link navigation
2. Footers
3. Inline text linksText Link Navigation
Most websites include some kind of navigation on the left hand side. This makes it one of the first things read by a search engine spider (read Table Structures For Top Search Engine Positioning by Mary Davies for methods on getting your content read before your left hand navigation). If it is one of the first things the search engine spiders sees when it goes through your site it will have a strong weïght added to it so it must be optimized with care.
If you are using text link navigation be sure to include the targeted keywords in the links. Thankfully this cannot be taken as meaning "cram your keywords into each and every link" because this is your navigation and that would look ridiculous. I've seen sites that try to get the main phrase in virtually every link. Not only does this look horrible, but it may get your site penalized for sp@m (especially if the links are one after another).
You don't have to get your keywords in every link but, if workable, every second or third link works well. Also consider what you are targeting on internal pages. If your homepage target is "web hostïng" and you've linked to your homepage in the navigation with "web hostïng main" which is followed by your contact page so you've used "contact us", it would be a good idea to use the anchor text "dedicated hostïng" for the third link. It reinforces the "hostïng" relevancy and also attaches relevancy to the dedicated hostïng page of the site to the phrase "dedicated hostïng" in the anchor text.
Footers
Footers are often the overused and abused area of websites. While they are useful for getting spiders through your site and the other points noted above, they should not be used as sp@m tools. I've seen in my travels, footers that are longer than the webpage content areas. Not only does this look bad, but it reduces the value of each individual link (which then become 1 out of 200 links rather than 1 out of 10 or 20).
Keep your footers clean, use the anchor text well, and link to the key internal pages of your website and you will have a well optimized footer. You will also want to include in your footer a link to a sitemap. On this sitemap, link to every page in your site. This is where you can simply ensure that every page gets found. Well worded anchor text is a good rule on your sitemap as well. You may also want to consider a limited description of the page on your sitemap. This will give you added verbiage to solidify the relevancy of the sitemap page to the page you are linking to.
Internal Text Links
Internal text links are links placed within the content of your work. They were covered in last week's article on content optimization, which gives me a great opportunïty to use one as an example.
While debatable, inline text links do appear to be given extra weïght since their very nature implies that the link is entirely relevant to the content of the site.
You can read more on this in last week's article.
Final Notes
As noted above, simply changing your internal navigation will not launch your site to the top of the rankings. It is important, however, to use each and every advantage available to create a solid top ten ranking for your site that will hold it's position.
Improving your internal navigation will get your pages doing better, will help get your entire site spidered, will help increase the value of internal pages and will build the relevancy of internal pages to specific keyword phrases.
Even if that's all it does, isn't it worth taking the time to do it right?
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Here are a few more articles on search engine promotion. I recommended that you read them - they are really helpful:
- Search Engine Optimization - FREE Advice>>
- Search Engine Submission - FREE Advice>>
- Search Engine Directory - Submission Tips>>
- Improving Link Popularity of Your Website>>
- Web Content Writing Using the Best Keywords>>
- How To Bid For Pay Per Click Search Engine>>
- Meta Tag For High Search Engine Ranking>>
- Writing Title Tag For Top Search Engine Ranking>>
- How To Write ALT Code & Comment Tag To Please The Search Engines>>
- Creating Robots.txt File>>
- Search Engine Rank Tracking Software>>
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