Google Keywords Part 7: On-Page SEO

OK, don’t be put off by the title. It sounds technical, but all it means is tweaking the text and content of your pages so that your Google keywords are emphasized. All we’ll be doing is a little editing, so that Google knows what your page is about, and thus serves it up to your audience.

If you’ve read this series thus far, you have one or more of what we’re calling “Google keywords” to target. Let’s take your top target, and start optimizing. This entry will consist of the absolute basics of on-page SEO, essential to search engine ranking.

There are two types of content we’ll be concerned with: that which is visible to the reader (the text on the page), and that which is invisible (the behind-the-scenes code that people don’t see, but that machines do). To tweak the code you’ll need to work with html or whatever software you’ve used to build your site.

The URL

Your web address may already be established, and out of your control. But if you are just choosing it now, try to include your entire primary keyword, preferably at the beginning of the URL. If your Google keywords are going to be “Italian sports cars”, try to get italiansportscars.com. Since that’s probably taken, start adding suffixes until you find one that’s available, e.g. italiansportscarsinfo.com. One or two hyphens are fine; four and up looks spammy. Use Nameboy Domain Name Generator to quickly generate ideas, and snag an available name quickly when you find a good one.

Page Title

Assuming we have the web site set up, we move on to tweaking the main page. The title of your main page should be your primary Google keywords – nothing more or less. It should be between ten and 60 characters, with no hyphens or other special characters. Don’t get fancy.

Description and Keyword Meta-tags

These are code elements, not seen by the user when browsing your site. You can set them in whatever software you use to build your site. They are not terribly important to Google, but they are to some other search engines. However, the description is often shown in your Google search results, so make it a reader-friendly pitch for your site. Sound informative, not salesman-like. Give a taste of your content; often the first couple of lines of the page work well.

The keyword tags are no longer relied upon by Google, but may affect your ranking in other engines. Just put in your primary Google keywords phrase, and nothing else. Humans won’t see this.

Keyword Density

Probably the most important on-page SEO factor is keyword density. This means what percentage of your text is actually made up of your Google keywords. Too little, and the page won’t seem relevant to the topic. Too much, and you’ll be seen as a spammer, as I apparently was (an update on the site referred to in that link: using the techniques on this page, I’ve moved the site back up from number 107 to number 10).

Use your keywords as naturally as possible, but fit them in somehow. The goal is generally considered to be from three to seven percent of your text. You can check this on the fly using this plug-in for Firefox. Simply highlight the keywords, and use the contextual menu to “Check Keyword Density”. I like to shoot for five percent of the body text. This plug-in will also let you know if you’ve achieved some of the other goals on this page.

H1, H2 and H3 tags

These are text formatting “headline” tags (of descending importance), so Google believes they imply relevance. Without too much explanation, the best advice for most pages is to place your keyword phrase near the top of your page, enclosed in H2 tags. It will be seen by the reader as a medium-sized headline, so make sure it works with your design. Don’t use H1, or Google will once again think you’re trying to game them.

Speaking of design, this is a good place to point out that text contained in graphics are invisible to search engines. The robots read your page as text-only. So you can have your keywords a foot long across the top of your page, but if they’re contained in an image, they might as well not be there. Set the “alt” tag of the image to whatever the text says, but don’t rely on that as a replacement. The H2 headline is your best bet.

Font Styles

The first couple of mentions of your Google keywords within the text should be in bold or italic. This lets Google know they are an important element of your content. Make sure this doesn’t look silly on the page. Look at it as if you were a reader, and make it fit in.

Order and Proximity

Multi-word keywords should be in exact order, without other words in between. You can get some secondary Google juice from slightly-rephrased versions (e.g. “Italian made sports cars”), but the main goal is to get them in order and next to each other.

Anchor Text

Anchor is a fancy word for “link”. If you link to a page on the same subject (especially one within your own site, which is highly recommended), the text the reader sees should be your keyword or a close variation. Google thinks this means the page is on-topic. A page on “Italian sports cars” that has links to “office furniture” looks suspicious to them.

For internal links, try to make sure the page you link to actually has the keyword in its address. If you have the Google keywords in your domain name, you’re set. Otherwise try to get it in the page address, like http://example.com/italiansportscars.html.

As for external links, we’ll cover that in a future post, but a few bits of advice: try to link only to quality, non-spammy sites. Don’t participate in link-trading schemes. You can trade links with friends and associates, but bad-quality or off-topic links can make you look bad to Google. Keep your links constant – Google doesn’t like “link churn”, or constantly changing links. Don’t ever link to link-trading, free-for-all link type sites. Nor should you pursue incoming links from these sites. Google sees these as “bad neighborhoods” and will think less of you. Finally: never pay for a link. Just don’t do it.

Site Structure

Try to structure your site so that you can reach any page in only two clicks. Anything buried deeper than that will be considered less important, both by readers and by Google.

File Size

Keep the entire page under 100k. If you’re using images, compress them as much as reasonably possible for a fast loading page. Again, this is good in terms of both Google and the reader. If necessary, remove images. Yes, I know it hurts.

There are many other tips to be had, but these are the essentials. Do everything here, and you’ll be in good shape to start with off-page SEO, which is a topic for another day…

Google Keywords Part 6: Keyword Stuffing

Before moving on to the next part in our Google keywords series, I want to stop and give you a warning. As mentioned previously, our next step will be optimizing your site for your targeted keywords. The obvious approach would be to jam the keywords into the site’s text as many times as possible, so Google sees how relevant we are to this phrase. That would be a big mistake.

Let me share the story of a site I built recently. I had settled on a particularly good phrase for my Google keywords. Google’s top results were weak – the top ten all had low PageRanks (for background on PageRank see here). I acquired a domain name consisting entirely of this phrase. I set up my site to be optimized for it. I wrote the content, and squeezed in my Google keywords everywhere I reasonably could, without making the content appear spammy. Everything was set.

Under normal circumstances, I would expect to wait several months to see decent search engine results. After all, the domain was brand new, the site was starting out from square one, its PageRank was beginning from zero, and there were no other sites linking to mine. And all of those factors are negatives to Google. All I was starting with was a good domain, and a site that was highly targeted. I submitted my site to Google and waited.

In a few days, I checked how I was ranking for my keywords (you can do this with a site like this, or this Firefox plug-in). I was shocked to see that, despite everything going against me, I ranked number 17 on my very first indexing. This was an amazing result. With a few more pages of content and a few incoming links, getting into the top ten seemed like a sure thing. Number one was even within reach.

I got back to work on the site, being careful not to upset the balance I had established, and got ready to celebrate. In a few more days, I checked again to see how much better I was ranking.

The site had dropped from number 17 to number 107.

So what happened? I had over-optimized. Or to use the less graceful term, I was guilty of “keyword stuffing”. Keyword stuffing, simply put, means using your targeted Google keywords too many times. Google’s algorithms are designed to reward pages that focus on something specific, but also to punish anyone who might put up a page stuffed full of the same words just to achieve good position in their results. And I had apparently crossed the line – though interestingly, it took them a second pass to notice.

So where is the line? If anyone claims to know, they are lying (unless perhaps they work for Google, but Google guards their algorithms like the formula for Coke). However, it has been that the optimum keyword density is somewhere between three and seven percent. That is to say, your keywords make up no more than that portion of your content. You can check your keyword density with many different tools (just Google “keyword density“).

In my case, the various tools agreed that my Google keywords had a density of around 15%, making me look to Google like a medium-grade search engine spammer, and I was automatically penalized.

Although every use of my keywords was justified, and my writing included them gracefully, Google’s robots didn’t care. And there’s today’s lesson. You are writing for both people and computers. Be careful not to annoy either one of them, or you’ll be ignored by both.

I’ll report back as I make progress in clawing my way back up.

Five Favorite Domain Name Tools

A friend wrote in for advice on searching for a domain name, so here are a few of my favorite tools to get going:

Nameboy Domain Name Generator is the industry standard of domain name suggestion. Simply give it a primary word, an optional secondary word and click Go. You’ll quickly have several pages of possibilities using your desired keyword(s) in various configurations, adding common prefixes and suffixes, as well as numerous compound words you might never have thought of. Availability is shown for the top six TLDs (Top Level Domains), and when you see something you like, you can click through and grab it immediately. Highly recommended.

Domai.nr is an interesting new tool which specializes in finding and checking the availability of “domain hacks“. Domain hacks are the unusual uses of sometimes exotic country code TLDs to hack together meaningful words and phrases. The best-known example is the highly successful del.icio.us, but the possibilities are many: how about chi.mp? Or cr.yp.to?

If you’re really desperate, these can be combined with subdirectories to make even more words possible. For example, since my name Jason is taken in every top-level configuration, perhaps I’d consider buying ja.so and putting up ja.so/n?

OK, it’s a stretch. But Domai.nr is fun to play with, and if nothing else, it may give you some ideas. The site is built with AJAX, so you receive instant, auto-complete gratification as you type.

Caveats: country codes come with varying prices, rules and in some cases residency restrictions. Also, Domainr only tells you that a domain might be available – the negative side of instant gratification is questionable accuracy. Domainr provides links through to the registrars so you can check for yourself.

Domainsbot is almost a combination of Nameboy and Domai.nr, in that it provides instant feedback via AJAX and gives suggestions like NameBoy. It provides a higher quantity (though generally lesser quality) of choices, and is a good back-up source when the others don’t come through. It isn’t reliable for domain availability information, so alway verify this yourself with another registrar. Also, if it doesn’t recognize a word, it will sometimes think you’re asking for Italian or German, which grows old very quickly.

Bustaname is another combination of these concepts; it uses quick (though unreliable) AJAX availability checking, but adds another interesting twist. Instead of a list of standard English prefixes and suffixes, you provide your own list. It takes a little more brain power and a lot more time, but you can come up with some solid names – in fact, this is where I came up with the name of this site.

Caveats: Bustaname is easily overwhelmed when your search returns too many choices, and frequently chokes on its own features. Start with fewer options checked, and slowly add them. The domain availability checker is so inaccurate as to be useless. Also, they try to shoehorn you into using their preferred registrars – don’t do it. If you find a good idea here, take it over to Nameboy or your favorite registrar and grab it there.

Finally, these and several other domain-oriented services are all together on one page here: http://www.free-webhosts.com/domain-name-tools.php. It looks cheesy, but it’s one of my most-used bookmarks. Just goes to show you – looks aren’t everything. Be sure to take a look at some of the others I haven’t mentioned here, and let me know if you have any favorites I missed. Good luck and happy hunting!