Google’s Best Practices SEO Guidelines Document
Wondering What Google Suggests About Properly SEOing Your Site?
You know that I write about many aspects of how to SEO your website or blog, and so many of my posts are geared to the beginner-to-intermediate level person who wants to learn more about SEO and/or handle the optimization of their site themselves. That’s fine and I love to help educate and give you proven ethical tips and techniques to achieve higher rankings.
Today I’m keeping it short and sweet. I thought I’d provide a copy of Google’s SEO guideline recommendations. I hope you are aware that Google brings all of us the bulk of our organic traffic – so we really must pay attention to what Google approves of, and doesn’t approve of, as far as optimization practices are concerned.
We don’t want to do anything that will send up a red flag to Google which will make them ignore our site. As example, are you aware that using an “autogenerated SEO” program is a big no-no as far as Google is concerned? As a matter of fact, they state:
Don’t use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google. (Source page: Webmaster guidelines.)
In addition, though not stated in the above quote, it is a known fact that Google ALSO frowns upon automated programs that fill your content pages with targeted keywords and that optimize pages using their so-called “built-in expertise”. Really. Don’t put your money into one of these programs hoping to inject keywords in the “right places” and to “properly” optimize your site! Do it the right way – by your own brainpower, research and personal know-how!
On a side note, WebPosition Gold is still maintaining a website that sells a number of products – and for many hundreds of dollars too, I might add. Don’t use programs like this. Again … PLEASE save your hard earned $$ and perform SEO yourself … or hire me. My professional SEO and web development services are very reasonable, I provide top-notch service and I’m a nice person to deal with, too! 
Anyway, here is a darn good guide that Google put together outlining some best practices that webmasters can follow that could improve their sites’ crawlability and indexing. Google SEO Starter Guide. Save yourself a copy. There’s good information in here and even an SEO beginner will be able to understand it and will certainly get educated from it.
How To SEO Your Blog Posts For High(er) Rankings
Make Your Blog Posts Search Engine Friendly – My Best Tips to SEO Optimize Your Blog
To make your posts properly optimized for a better chance at higher search engine rankings and to be more SEO friendly, I can offer a number of suggestions. Surprisingly, many bloggers don’t pay any attention to SEO issues, so their blogs are basically lost in search-engine-land.
That’s a shame, as it’s really not hard to attain decent (or even top) organic search engine positions by following some basic SEO guidelines. But I must briefly mention that to keep any blog in the top SERPs (search engine results pages), you need to continue to add quality content on a regular basis, and you also need good quality incoming links.
My SEO Suggestions to Optimize Your Blog Posts
The Title: Here’s the first SEO step. Your main keyword phrase must be incorporated into your post’s title, and it should be at the beginning, rather than the end of the Title if at all possible.
Post Slug: The slug (one of the built-in tools in your blog) is found over in the right hand side column of the WordPress editor. By default, if left empty, the slug will automatically be filled with your entire title when you publish the post, but with the words all in lower case and each word separated by a dash. As example, this post’s slug is: how-to-seo-your-wordpress-blog-posts-for-high-rankings.
The slug is just like the page name of a traditional HTML coded website. But, you can manually type in whatever you wish the slug to be (it will not alter your Title). Many people, myself included, will alter the words in the slug to be shorter than their Title, or maybe a little more keyword focused than what their post’s Title happens to be. I don’t make a habit of doing this, but every now and then do alter it for one reason or another.
Blog Post: Following “traditionally taught” SEO techniques, you should use your keyword phrase in the very first sentence of your post.
Contrary to a lot of information floating around the internet, it is not necessary to use H1, H2, bold, or italic codes as examples, on your keyword phrase in order to gain higher rankings. But, for aesthetic reasons, you may wish to use one of these HTML codes to bring attention to the actual keyword phrase in your copy.
I suggest you sprinkle your keyword phrase throughout your copy. Use the keyword phrase a little bit more than you would in normal conversation. But don’t overdue it … you’ll look like you’re spamming. Also, incorporate your keyword into the very last paragraph.
Tags: Tags are a misunderstood, thusly often overlooked, part of optimizing your blog. Make sure to use the tags at all times. Include your main keyword phrase and then some keyword variations or modifiers. Tags are sort of like labels, but in this situation, they are keywords that pertain to the content of your post. Tags help make it easier for other people to find blog posts relating to a specific category, or subject for instance. So include keywords that you think would help your post be found if someone were searching for it 
Hyperlinks: If your posts contains hyperlinks to other posts (or pages) in your blog, to web pages on other sites, or to affiliate programs that are related to the topic, it is a good SEO tactic to include a keyword phrase to hyperlink to them. Of course make sure it is a keyword that pertains in some way to what your post is about.
Images: I like using images in my blog posts whenever I can, since a picture often speaks a thousand words. Make sure you include the “alt” tag in the image’s coding, and make sure you’ve placed the keyword phrase in there. This helps give you a small rankings boost.
For Serious WordPress Bloggers, I Suggest and Use this Great SEO Plugin
All in One SEO Pack: This free SEO plugin for WordPress is an absolute must-have for any blogger who is serious about SEO-ing their posts. You can provide information for a Title tag (yes, it can be completely different from the title that starts off your post); the Description meta tag and the Keyword meta tag. Whatever you enter will be shown in the SERPs. Download it and I promise you’ll love it.
NOTE: Since I use WordPress exclusively for my blogging needs, I’m not able to suggest plugins for other blogs built on the many other platforms available. Sorry …
A Free SEO How-To eBook for Anyone Who Has a Website or Blog
That’s right! Free information and guess what? I wrote this primer and if you’d really like to learn search engine optimization basics to help improve your website or blog’s chances at better rankings, then read it over. I’m told I did a great job providing clear easy-to-implement optimization techniques. So why not download a free copy of my “The SEO Edge: Get Ahead of Your Competition EVERY Time!” right now.
Best of luck in gaining higher rankings with your blog posts.
Keyword Strategy For Beginners: Understanding Keyword Competition Levels
How Search Engine Ranking Competition Affects Visitor Traffic
Just the other day I received an email from someone complimenting one of my websites and saying that she was adding a link to it on her site. She also shared how she wanted to make money from her site, but was struggling to understand how in the heck to “get found” online in order to get lots of visitor traffic.
I clicked over to check it out and oh dear … it was pretty much what I expected to see. Sadly, though I saw a website that was built around excellent efforts and perhaps a pretty good niche, I saw blunder after blunder in every aspect one could imagine IF INDEED one wishes to not only appear in the search engine results which brings the visitors, but more importantly wishes to make some serious money from that site.
So … why are some people smiling about their search engine rankings and the levels of traffic they receive, and others are bemoaning about trying to figure out how to get traffic? My best assumption is easy to make. If anyone is wondering how to “get visitors”, then right there I know that the individual is unaware of even the most basic of SEO and keyword strategy fundamentals.
I’ve got lots of great posts about keyword research and such in the Keyword category, so please check it out and read the posts to educate yourself. But today I want to touch upon a very important aspect that needs to be considered when doing your keyword research.
Keyword Strategy – Research the Competitiveness Level
Let’s define what competitiveness of a keyword phrase is. It means how many other websites on the internet are using that exact keyword phrase – such as “vegetarian recipes” – that you want to target in the content of your web page.
There are a number of ways to perform keyword phrase research, and this post isn’t attempting to tackle all of them, rather I want to easily show one way that beginners can use to help figure out what keywords they should target.
Remember now, I said this is but one of many ways to help determine keyword strategy. But it can give good insight to those of you starting out.
As a very general rule, when you type your search term into Google a page of results will be returned. You will see this (click image for full size):
**Note the areas I’ve circled at the top of this image. You see the SERP (search engine result pages) result for the keyword phrase.
On the following chart, let’s look at some numbers:
- If there are less than 100,000 SERPs returned for a keyword phrase that phrase can be considered low competition.
- If you find between 100,000 and 1,000,000 SERPs for a keyword phrase, that phrase is considered a medium level of competition.
- If you see SERPs over 1 million … I’d recommend you not try to go after that keyword phrase until you’ve got a good sized site that utilizes lots of medium to low competition phrases.
|
SERPs In Google |
Competition Level |
|
< 100,000 |
Low |
|
100,000 – 1,000,000 |
Medium |
|
1,000,000 > |
High |
However, if you’re entering into a highly competitive niche – such as “computer equipment”, a keyword phrase with 50,000 results can most likely be considered highly competitive. Much does hinge upon the niche and the other websites attention to SEO and other factors.
It is necessary to formulate keyword strategy on a site-by-site, niche-by-niche basis. Everyone wants their website to achieve top rankings for targeted traffic. One must come up with a well researched and thought-out list of keywords to target, whether you’re a beginner or expert. In the case of most online marketers who are just starting out, keyword strategy means they should start building content around slightly less competitive phrases, and then work their way up to including web page content on higher competition phrases.
Good traffic boils down to proper keyword research coupled with effective keyword strategy coupled with great content.
Research Those ‘Most Searched’ Keywords
If You Don’t Keep Three Steps Ahead of Your Competition …
You’ll Get Trampled in the Search Engine Rankings & Miss Out on Better Visitor Traffic
I’m sure you know that people use different word combinations, known as keyword phrases, when they search for your products or services online. In order for your potential customers to find your site when they search, it’s important to use these keywords in your website or blog’s copy.
You can stab in the dark, and try to guess at the keyword phrases you think people are using to find you … or you can do intensive research, just like I do in my capacity as a professional SEO consultant. You know what, though? I always seem to get a chuckle when I perform my keyword research for my clients. Why? Well I’ll tell you …
I ask my clients many questions to get a handle on their marketing niche. One of the questions I ask is, “What words do you think your customers would use to find you via an internet search?” Like I just said, I am usually amused at the words they give me … and then normally even MORE amused when I get down to the real nitty-gritty of researching and determining the keywords they’ll need to be focusing on.
The reason I normally get a chuckle is that the words they give me are often NOT the words you’d necessarily want to target in the hopes of capturing a broader spectrum of potential visitors/customers. Sometimes I find that the words they think would be good to bring them traffic aren’t even used by searchers. And ultimately, after I tell them of my findings, they say something to the effect of “… no wonder my site isn’t making me any money!!”
The bottom line is you cannot “guess” at the keyword phrases you use in your Title tag, Description meta tag or each page or post of content. You CAN’T! Even though most internet marketers still have no knowledge of the importance of SEO and keyword research, you can’t take it for granted that YOU can squeak by without tending to these very important and vital components to your online success.
Two free-to-use online tools that you can use for your keyword research are the Google Adwords tool and WordTracker’s free version. So … stop guessing and start researching! You’ll be very glad you did.
