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 Many Keywords Make An Effective Query?
Let’s Learn About Short-Tail and Long-Tail Search String Queries
The following question always arises when new online marketing website owners are learning to implement keyword strategy, “How many keywords are best (or allowed, or OK to use, etc.) for my keyword phrases?” Two, three … five, six? Well, the fact of the matter is, nothing about keyword phrase length is set in cement!
Two and Three Word Queries are Used Most Often by Searchers
What is “set in cement” is the need to know what keywords and keyword phrases your customer base would most likely be typing into (or querying) the search engines. That’s what matters! So, first you’ve got to compile a keyword list or have one researched for you by a knowledgeable SEO consultant, such as the thorough one I offer: Keyword Research Report.
Keyword phrases that your customers are using to find you can be rather eye-opening when you start looking at the statistical information offered by your web host’s web tracker or hit-counter service. If you don’t have a means to see exactly what keyword phrases your website’s visitors are using to arrive at your website, then I highly suggest you go to StatCounter.com and take advantage of their free service.
I recommend StatCounter to many of my small business clients. They find it is pretty easy to understand and is invaluable in not only helping them to do a better job at targeting the right keywords for use in their content, but also to learn where their visitors are originating from and how many visitors are landing on their site. StatCounter does provide good statistical information.
An Interesting Break-Down of Short and Long-Tail Keyword Use
According to data collected in January 2007 from users of European Web analytics provider OneStat, most people use 2- or 3-word queries in search engines. The RankStat research was based on a sample of 2 million visitors, made up of 20,000 visitors in 100 countries each day. Here’s what they discovered:
- Two-word phrases — 28.38 percent
- Three-word phrases — 27.15 percent
- Four-word phrases — 16.42 percent
- One-word phrase — 13.48 percent
- Five-word phrases — 8.03 percent
- Six-word phrases — 3.67 percent
- Seven-word phrases — 1.63 percent
- Eight-word phrases — 0.73 percent
- Nine-word phrases — 0.34 percent
- Ten-word phrases — 0.16 percent
I find these statistics on keyword phrase length interesting. And yes, depending upon what statistical company is reporting the findings, there will be slight differences in the percentages. But even now, in 2009, these numbers are not too different as provided in reports from various statistical companies that come into my inbox.
What these stats tell us is that searchers are learning to use multi-word combinations to help zero in on what they are searching for. They’re learning that the more precise they are in providing search terms, the greater the chance they’ll get to the information they are searching for faster. This also means the information will more than likely be exactly what they want.
Long-tail keyword phrases are normally quite easily incorporated into our Title tag, Description meta tag and web page content. The better we are at narrowing our keyword terms for each page of content, the greater chance we have to not only rank higher in the search engines, but to also attract targeted traffic to our website.
Targeted Keyword Phrases = A Greater Chance for Targeted Website Traffic
Just in case you are not sure what all this means, I’ll use this example. Based on the above statistics, we’d see keywords being used such as:
- Two-word phrase — cake recipes
- Three-word phrase — chocolate cake recipe
- Four-word phrase — chocolate bundt cake recipe
- One-word phrase — recipes
- Five-word phrase — easy chocolate bundt cake recipe
I am sure this example shows how much sense the 2 or more word phrases make to your search engine optimization efforts. The more specific you are in each page of information you create, the better off you will be in all marketing and SEO respects.
For more information on researching and utilizing keywords, refer to this very informative FREE 75-page case study: Keyword Research Guide from WordTracker.
Is Your Website ‘Attractive’ But A Flop At Making You Money??
Do You Know what Constitutes a Well Designed Website?
FACT: Over 90% of all websites are a complete waste of money.
I read that statement today in an email newsletter I receive from a very-VERY successful online marketer and I thought “Hey! this is so true”. And it kind of hit home (again) with me because this past week I talked to yet ANOTHER struggling newbie website owner who wanted to make money online via her website but sadly wasn’t after many years being online.
She couldn’t understand why she wasn’t getting top Google rankings (after all these years), and WHY there weren’t lots of qualified visitors coming into her site from search engines. However, she admitted she had what is probably one of the better examples of what a website design should NOT be! (And guess what? She was right … it was REALLY bad!)
On a side note, I’m happy to say she decided to hire my services. But back to explaining things for you …
Most folks think “website design” means how visually attractive the site is. And yes, we all do want our sites to be attractive enough to the eye that visitors aren’t turned off by the color scheme, or presentation, etc. BUT! Most new website owners don’t realize that there are other hugely important behind-the-scene requirements needed in order that the search engine spiders can crawl a site; determine what a site has to offer potential visitors as far as information; and then figure out where to rank the site and it’s pages, to name a few basic issues.
As but one example of how “bad” our new client’s site was … how about content that was NOT search engine spiderable! The (terribly unqualified) individual who built the site for her saved all the content as images! 
And then those images were placed on individual web pages. (Do wonders never cease?)
In essence, all the content was invisible to the search engine spiders. Egads! There was no chance at ranking for any possible keyword phrase, since the spiders do not “read” words that are part of an actual .jpg or .gif image. This error in content presentation was only the tip of the “bad” iceberg. Yes, our poor client’s site had many more serious issues that existed.
My web development partner Damian and I experience all varieties of “bad” much too often when being hired by clients who come to us for website development and SEO assistance. Most of the websites we see are totally incapable of being effective online marketing machines!
So, if you think a really good looking, graphically heavy website is what you need to make money online … good luck! But, if you are slowly realizing that a website must be very easy to navigate for the visitor; has a clean presentation for the content and images; AND is properly coded so that it can be spidered by the search engine bots without a hitch … then you are correct!
If you are ready to start making money online, then in today’s world you really must have your website professionally developed and designed, and optimized so that you have the very best chance you can at earning income. Free websites being hosted on free hosting services just don’t cut it if you are seriously wanting to be an online marketer.
I’m happy to chat with you about your website and online marketing concerns. Please contact me for a free no-strings-attached assesment of how we can help you.
Are You Targeting The Wrong Keywords?
Boost Website Traffic with Targeted Keyword Optimization
Does your internet marketing website rank highly for keywords that almost no one searches for? It’s great to have top-ten keyword rankings, but if these phrases aren’t bringing a good stream of quality traffic to your website, then it’s obvious a “keyword overhaul” is in order.
Ethical SEO Techniques to Revamp Your Website Without Starting from Scratch
You say, “but I did research the keywords and the phrases I’m using throughout my website ARE the ones that proved to be most relevant to my website’s theme!” Yet, your visitor traffic is very poor. What can you to do in this case? You don’t want to rewrite your entire site’s copy. Take heart, there is a way to work through this not-so-uncommon situation.
Here’s a real example: I was hired to optimize a commercial website that had hundreds and hundreds of web pages of quality content, was receiving a few thousand visitors a day by virtue of other non-internet marketing methods, yet was severely lagging in qualified organic search engine visitor traffic.
Interestingly, the owner had tried to SEO the website himself, which I have no problem with. However, his lack of understanding of true search engine optimization techniques misled him to believe that merely “targeting” phrases pertaining to his marketing niche would do the trick. He thought that of course people would be typing those keywords into the search engines and voila, they’d find his website. Sorry, but no. And the lack of traffic via the various search engines bore this out to be true.
So, back to his big concern which was “Why am I NOT receiving a higher volume of visitor traffic to my (content rich) website?” Here is what I did as his SEO consultant and what you can do for your own site(s), too.
Researching the Keywords that People are REALLY Searching For
My first course of action was to turn to the keyword analysis tool Wordtracker to see if people were using the keywords my client had targeted. The news was, they weren’t! However, through research using this great tool, I did uncover many phrases that people WERE searching for that certainly pertained to his marketing niche and could easily be utilized using a few simple SEO techniques. I was able to uncover many good, high volume keyword phrases that could easily be implemented into his content, Title and Description and Keyword Meta tags. Yes, in many instances, there was a little tweaking necessary to many pages of content, but mind you, this was the most cost effective way to revamp his website. He had great content already, it just didn’t necessarily contain the proper targeted keywords.
In his situation, he had completely ignored the Title tag and Description meta tag. So, because these two tags are a major factor in helping to achieve high search engine rankings, I wrote compelling Titles and Descriptions using the newly researched keywords. I also gave him directions on how his editorial staff should tweak the content so that the new keywords would be sprinkled effectively throughout the copy.
After this “quick fix” was done (honestly, it took me a total of two months to compose and then optimize all his Title and Description meta tags because he had hundreds of web pages), we started to actually see search engine rankings for these newly targeted keywords. Yes, these rankings were rather low, but this is exactly how almost all SEO keyword campaigns begin. At this writing, the website is still coming up in the SERPs and guess what? A number of the keywords have already made it to top-ten rankings.
What Can You Learn from My Client’s Website Experience?
I attribute my SEO success with this small business website to the fact that I really dug into researching the keywords and the very necessary optimization of the Title and Description tags. The success also had (and still has) to do with the website owner’s willingness to be flexible.
He understood something would have to be changed to make the turn-around he was looking for. He accepted that much of his site’s content would have to be altered in accordance with the keyword phrases that people were REALLY searching for. He was willing to spend a little money, that being my services, to implement these changes.
The Bottom Line For Your Website …
If poor visitor traffic is plaguing your website, possibly the scenario I’ve just shared with you might be all that you need to do, too. Research keyword phrases and find out what people are really typing into the search engines. Make sure your content and all tags properly utilize these newly discovered keywords.
I do hope this information can help YOU improve your website traffic.
If you would like to have me perform Keyword Research for you, please Contact Me and I’ll be happy to discuss how we can work together to improve your website’s traffic.
