SEO - off site techniques

The off-site SEO is a bit of a minefield, but bear in mind that you can get position one without any offsite optimisation if your keywords are 'niche' enough...
Getting links is possible from one of four methods that I can think of, and be aware that there is a value in a link whether or not anybody ever sees it or clicks on it. Search Engine 'bots' will see the link regardless of whether it is seen by your potential visitor, the bot will also take note of what is called the 'anchor text' ie. the words that are highlighted, for instance I might use the words SEO genius to link to my blog that deals with website building, search engines et al... having anchor text with specific keywords is considered key to off-site optimisation.
These are the different links you might have:

• Directories: Getting yourself listed in directories is fairly easy, there is even software available to help to automate the process, still painstaking, because most directories allow a certain amount of automation ie. the software populates categories like 'description' 'keywords' 'URL' and 'Title' etc,,, for you - you still have to add them by hand - or pay someone to do it for you... Some directories make a charge, others are free - I prefer the free ones! - it may be a risky process as some sites are blacklisted by search engines and it may have a negative effect if you get yourself listed on one of the 'bad neighborhoods'. An indication of a 'good' site would be whether the site is 'cached' by Google or whether it has any 'PageRank' (the google toolbar will tell you this or a browser SEO plug-in such as the one I use on Google Chrome).
• Paid links: many people get a company to find websites that will insert links for money - blogs often carry 'sponsored posts' or 'reviews' from which they get a small one-off payment. Other will use networks and forums to offer sponsored links directly to site owners and bloggers - invariably, they will request a specific anchor text - in fact they will often have three links in each post which has to be a minimum length (100 words, 200 words etc.). Google do NOT like this, and will punish sites that they find are doing it - the cynical person might argue that is because Google like to be paid for their own 'sponsored links' in search results - I think ultimately the monopolies commission may take a dim view of the way that Google controls search results, and 'punishes' sites that try to 'compete' with paid search engine entries (a company can legitimately pay Google to appear in position 1, but will be 'slapped' for paying someone else to try and achieve the same result..)
• Link exchanges: I can't possibly keep track of how many times I am asked to place a link on a site in exchange for an external link back to my site. It is important to realise that Google recognises a link exchange, and treats them accordingly eg.. If you link to 'joes carpets' and joes carpets links back to you, the link won't be as effective as when joes carpets links to you and you do not link back ie. if you get 'one way' links to your site, your site grows in 'authority'. So most webmasters indulge in what is called three way linking where the link that comes back is from a different site. The danger is that the link you are offered in exchange is possibly valueless, and unless they are in the same niche as you, there is little point anyway. This is the dilema then, your competitors are in the same niche, but they're not going to link to you... Your suppliers may link to you, you may get colleagues or consultants to link to you, but you can spend a lot of time asking for links and will rarely get anyone take you up on it...
• Ghost sites: which brings us nicely onto the last point, if you can't get sites to link to you, make your own... create a site which to all intents and purposes has content that is liked to yours, has all the right keywords and is optimised... then start linking words into your site - ideally picking up on anchor text. don't forget that you are not really trying to drive 'traffic' to this site or even to your own site - it is ONLY the link that is important - as long as you can guarantee that the site is 'crawled' and 'cached' by google, then the bots should automatically attribute authority to wherever those links point - and these are 'one way' links, nothing comes back the other way. Of course you can take this further and make more ghost sites which link into this ghost site, thus bumping up the authority down the line...

That's about the long and short of it, you can use searches to find out what your competitors are doing, there are supposed 'formulas' for keyword density and all that, but I think content should be 'organic' and should flow naturally rather than be made to fit into a formula that may or may not have an impact. At then end of the day, Google is looking for cheats, so don't go looking for short-cuts. Build good sites with good content, everything else should stem from that starting point.

SEO - on site techniques

On-site search engine optimisation techniques include:

• Content: keyword stuffing up to an optimum point, variation of keywords to cover similar and related terms - at the end of the day, 'content' is supposed to be what it's all about...
• Tags: the traditional stuff such as 'keyword' tags and 'description' and 'title' are used by some search engines, and importantly may show up in results - in SEO terms having a page which has the title tag 'homepage' or even worse 'untitled' is a major crime worthy of public flogging.
• URL's: - using keywords in a URL seems to me to be one of the easiest way to get your point across - apart from your 'index' page, other pages should be richly laden with keywords. Don't call a page 'methods.htm', instead call it 'methods_for_making_money_online.htm' or some other title that includes your target keywords and search terms.
• Pictures: may not be an obvious optimisation tool, but it doesn't do any harm to get yourself into 'google images' and the theory is that this could have an impact on standard searches (but of course no-one actually knows..). Therefore, to be on the safe side, every picture can have it's own title tag - which should have keywords where possible and also, each picture filename should reflect the content eg: the file should not be called 'IMG000345.jpg', when we could call it 'portable_music_device.jpg' or other more descriptive title.

[Note that spaces are a bit of a pain when using browsers, so I tend to use underscore instead to separate words in a phrase.]

Of these four, I tend to concentrate on content and URL's primarily, time spent on onsite optimisation is time well-spent in my estimation, off-page takes a lot of effort for few positive results..

SEO - introduction

There is a lot of whaffle talked about search engine optimisation, but when you look at it, there are only two types of optimisation:

1. ON-SITE optimisation - the stuff you build into your own website to make them search-engine friendly..
2. OFF-SITE optimisation - the links that you get for your site to make the search engine think that your site has 'authority'.

There is nothing more to it than that, the devil is in the detail of course, and how you achieve the above can lead you down some interesting avenues, however because Google keeps stumm, no-one knows whether the more off-the-wall solutions will work either short-term or if they do, there's no guarantee they will work long-term - especially if Google get wind of what you are up to...!

In this series, we are going to look at both types of optimisation, and the regular things that anyone can do that will enhance search engine results for your website. We will be looking at legitimate ways to promote your site in an organic way, I am not one to indulge in certain black-hat techniques that give impressive results in the short-term.

You won't do any harm carrying out the simple steps that we will be looking at, these techniques probably cover about 80% of what you can do to enhance your site, and each step is easy to carry out with no experience or special software whatsoever.

SEO plug-in

I have been using Google Chrome recently, and although I am not really one to get loaded up with plug-ins, I starting using two straight away. The first plug-in I installed was a googlemail plug-in which is very useful. The googlemail plug-in lets you know by sounding an alarm when mail arrives, indicating how many unread emails are in your inbox, and even popping up a preview of the mail when it arrives.
The next plug-in I discovered was an SEO plug-in - this gives an SEO overview of the currently-displayed page. The overview includes Google PageRank, backlinks for Google, Yahoo and others, Technorati and alexa rankings, whether the site is in DMOZ etc... I have found this plug-in to be extremely useful for overviewing my own sites, and also those of others that compete for the same keywords and markets.

Similar stories:
Google Chrome
PageRank

Google 'gaming'

Changes are taking place in the world of Google, now they are looking at how they can improve on 'apps' that give local information. I have come across reports about apps that can identify pictures taken from a mobile phone camera. The app can recognise a logo, shopfront or landmark and give search results relating to what it can 'see'.
This is a tremendous leap forward in how Google can continue to help people to find what they need, but it has caused a stir amongst webmaster and journalists that are concerned with writing about SEO. However, my take on it is that really it is up to Google to come up with a way to integrate the information that is already there, so in the long term, webmasters are not required to jump every time Google comes up with a new concept or search hysteresis. It seems to me that webmasters are in danger of forgetting that Google has a clientele (primarily the technology-aware general public) to serve and therefore have a duty to bring your website to the attention of their clients where relevant. The idea of gaming the results to get yourself in a high position regardless of relevance is a short-term tactic. For those in for the long-term, my advice is to keep on doing what you are doing and let Google worry about getting your site into the search results - there is still no replacement for good content although there are naturally small things that you can do to make sure your site is optimised. Optimisation is still based on the basic tenets that it always has been, with noticeably less emphasis on PageRank (off-page optimisation), and more emphasis of the following on-page tactics:
Content, content, content - unless you are planning a landing page only (shame on you...), you should really spent the majority of your time on producing good content. I wouldn't even be overly concerned about keyword density because if you write naturally and informatively, your keyword content should be naturally correct.
Tags - it is so simple to add title, alt, keyword and description you would have to be crazy not to do it despite the fact that it is not considered 'sexy' - you would be far better employed doing tags than designing a flash animation for your visitors. It is still a webmaster crime of epic proportions to have a page title come up as 'home', 'index' or 'untitled' no matter how good your page looks if a visitor ever actually found it.
URL's including keywords - still a winner for search results and will continue to be - any page that does not have a keyword in the URL may be a page wasted.
As long as the oh-so simple rules of on-page optimisation are behind what you are doing, I believe Google is obliged to seek you out and put you in the search results... THAT after all is their job, it is not as many believe, Google's job to 'police' the internet.

Still looking for PageRank?

I am starting to come round to the conclusion that PR is a bit of a self-fulfilling dream... after all, what is it's value?
Does it get you SERP (search engine results position)? seemingly not as I have several sites with little or no PR that achieve first-page results for specific targeted key-words.
Many of us were slave to PR when we started blogging, and the weeping could be heard from afar when Google slapped us all for trying to 'game' PR with viral schemes. Some desperately hung on, determined to show their contrite hearts to Daddy Google by refusing paid posts and removing 'do follow' from their blogs.
Did it make any difference? Did traffic cease or did our sites disappear from the search results? Maybe there were some short-term effects here and there, maybe Google has learned some lessons and maybe there is not so much money being thrown at paid bloggers, but not an awful lot has really changed.
I am promoting a new site at the moment, and have concentrated almost exclusively on 'on-page' optimisation - the type of SEO that doesn't rely on outside links and therefore is not affected by PR. My conclusions are that you can certainly get ranked on page 1 without PR- and most of the time, I am only held off the top-spot by Wikipedia... So I leave you with this... What is the value of PageRank?
And my answer is that you really only need to think about it if you are competing for a very highly sought after keyword. You may easily get SERP for a cleverly thought out associated phrase with virtually no 'off-page' optimisation at all. Of course, if many of those who sponsored posts took this view, they would stop paying for links except for those sickeningly 'popular' recurring promotions (I leave the themes of these to your imagination), so I hope sponsors will ignore my views and continue to send interesting and varied opportunities.