Frequently Asked Questions

 

Q:What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
Ans: The process of making your web pages search engine friendly. The main goal of SEO is to get your pages indexed and listed on the first few pages of a Search Engine Page Results (SERPs) for your most relevant and / or profitable keywords.

 

Q: What is a keyword?
Ans: It is a HOOK that you fish for internet users with. You densely use the words you would like users to search for you in your text and the engines pick them up and index you for these terms.

 

Q:How do I find out the best keywords to target?
Ans: The "best" keyword depends on the following main factors:

1.) The amount of traffic it will generate.
2.) The difficulty of attaining a top ranking.
3.) The profitability of that keyword.

In this answer I will address each point and give recommendations on tools to use to help you in your assessment.

 The Amount of Traffic it Will Generate
Often people choose keywords based on how popular they think they may be. Mostly it is based on "real world" factors rather then fact which is readily available. For instance, I recently saw someone who proposed they were going to go after the term "nursing homes" due to the aging population.
Although this area may be growing quickly, those interested in finding out more information often do not use a computer or if they did, would not be researching it online. Although they would still get visitors, they would find there are much better keywords to target with profit in mind. When it comes to traffic, the best measurement is actual searches. This will tell you how many people search in a day or month for that term and it can be a great indicator. By far, the most popular tool for finding this out is the Keyword Suggestion Tool. This tool combines the two most popular ways of judging popularity, Wordtracker and Overture. In addition, it suggest related keywords and lists their traffic. Always remember however, that this is total searches. These search numbers will always be divided among the SERPs.

The Difficulty of Attaining a Top Ranking
If you simply chose the keywords with highest amount of traffic, you could still lose money. This is because these keywords typically warrant a lot more work to rank for. A perfect keyword is one that has a lot of searches but little SEO competition and moderate to easy to rank for. The best tool I have found for this is the Keyword Difficulty Tool created by Rand Fishkin. It will give you an indication of the amount of SEO work required which you can balance against the number of searches.

The Profitability of that Keyword
There are also keywords where you may get 1000s of visitors with only one conversion while others where you can achieve 1 for every 100. This should be factored in as unless you make your money per impression, you want the highest number of conversions per visitor. The best way I know to evaluate this is to run an AdWords account. The amount of data you receive by starting a campaign can be very useful in establishing the conversion rate. I believe it is always better to spend $10 to find out a keyword isn't profitable then to spend 6 months getting it to number one, THEN find out its a dog.

The moral of the story is although there is no such thing as a "perfect" keyword, you can find the best ones for you by using a combination of the factors above.

Q: What is "PR" or Page Rank?
Ans: PageRank is one of the methods Google uses to determine a page's relevance or importance. It is only one part of the story when it comes to the Google listing, but the other aspects are discussed elsewhere (and are ever changing) and PageRank is interesting enough to deserve a paper of its own.


Q: What is the proper search engine safe redirect?
Ans: A 301 redirect is called "permanent", and that is what you want to use.  302's  are considered spammy, and easily hijacked.

Q: What is a robots.txt?
Ans: A text file that keeps obedient bots from crawling web pages you have said not to.

Q: What is a Google sitemap?
Ans: A Google sitemap is the bots map to your site, most are in XML format.

 

Q: What is an Algorithm?
Ans: A set of mathematical rules used to determine the rank of a web page within search engine results.

Q: What is a Reciprocal link?
Ans: It the link you place on your page in exchange for another site placing yours or services.

Q: What is Stuffing?
Ans: Keyword stuffing is a deceptive technique to try and elevate a Web site's search engine result ranking by hiding text, so it is unlikely to be seen by a visitor but will be visible to search engines.
This is usually done by making the font color of text match the background color or by making the text very small. Keyword stuffing is ineffective and may get offending Web sites removed from Google's search engine index.

Q: What is Anchor text?
Ans: The text part of a link you click is used by search engines to score page relevancy percentage.

Q: What is "ALT" text?
Ans: It is the mouse over or tool tip text attached to images, text, and links.

Q: What is Keyword Density?
Ans: It is the measurement of the ratio of keyword versus
the other text in your page.

 

Q:What is a Search Engine?
Ans: Search Engines, such as Google, MSN, and Yahoo, are software programs that allow computer users with internet connections find information about your product or service from the billions of pages of information that are accessible via the World Wide Web.

 

Q:Why doesn't my Web site rank very well in the search engines?

Ans: Having your website rank high in the search engines is a science and the rules for search engine optimization (SEO) are always changing. Here are some reasons why you may be having poor ranking:

  • Incorrect usage of the TITLE tag or no TITLE tag content.
  • Too many occurences of the same word in a page (spamming).
  • Missing H1 and H2 heading tag content.
  • Missing ALT tag content in your graphic links.
  • No meaningful content in the first 250 characters on each page.
  • Less than 200 words per page.
  • Very few pages on your website.
  • No links from other websites to your website (link popularity).

Also, you should always submit your site to any search directories manually. Please do not use automated submission services.

 

Q:How long does it take for SEO results to kick in?

Ans: The amount of time required to see results of search engine optimization work range anywhere from 30 days for existing sites in local or niche markets to 24 months for new websites in a competitive of national/global market.

 

Q:What is my site ranking dependent on?

Ans: Site ranking tends to be "cumulative" and is dependent on the following factors:

  1. The specific keyword phrases (search terms) that have been targeted
  2. The overall competitiveness of your industry - how many players are there
  3. Whether you are targeting a regional, national, or international market
  4. How well ranking is monitored and the site tweaked over time for SEO improvement
  5. The progress of your reciprocal linking campaign
  6. number of competitor sites achieving new ranking themselves

 

Q:Does every page of my website really need to be optimized?

Ans: In a word - yes. Every page of a website can be a potential entry point for visitors. You can't predict which page or pages will be ranked the best for specific keywords. As such, each page must be individually optimized to for optimal ranking. Collectively, all pages of your website reinforce the common "theme" of the site, which also can help boost ranking. Don't assume that your home page is the most important page on your site.

 

Q:Why are SEO services so expensive?

Ans: SEO is a highly-specialized craft requiring much research, forethought, skill and can be extremely time-consuming to implement correctly. However, compared to offline and print advertising, SEO is quite cheap. The cost of having your website SEO optimized is by far the best advertising dollars spent and the return on your investment (ROI) can be very great.

 

Q:Can you guarantee a number #1 position in the search engines?

Ans: Nobody can guarantee a number #1 position or specific ranking for your site for a given keyword phrase. There are simply too many factors beyond anyone's control - the search engines changing their ranking algorithms, efforts made by competitors, and new sites being added to the Web.
Obtaining a specific ranking is analogous to managing a portfolio. Your financial advisor will do their best to monitor the stock market and other indicators and to make sure your portfolio is managed to the best of their abilities. However, your advisor cannot guarantee that your portfolio will be at a specific dollar value or even that the amount will be up at all by a given date.