Michael Doyle | Blog

SEO – Case Study: adobe.com

The first result for searching the term "click here" on Google is adobe.com. This seems strange when looking at the adobe web site. There is no mention of that term when looking through the adobe site (title, meta tags, description, etc.). So, on page optimizations is not having any affect, the fact that a huge amount of highly ranked trusted pages link to adobe for products (specifically adobe reader) is putting it at the top of the results.

Many of the sites linking to Adobe are using the terms "click" and "here" to send visitors to access Adobe content. A large majority of these sites have a high page rank.

So, the main point is that on page omptimization is important, but off page optimization is far more important.

SEO – Getting banned by Google

There are many ways to manipulate Google into seeing the relevance of your website. If doing so it is likely your site will get banned. Manipulation can be done on page and off page.

On Page

• Using hidden text
• Alt image spamming
• Unnecessary amount of meta tags
• Unnecessary amount of keywords in the page title

Off Page

• Using link farms
• Linking with Penalized websites

Linking with penalized websites can really be annoying. If you exchange links with a site with a PageRank of 6, great! But if that site starts trying to manipulate Google to increase it's PageRank (this is reffered to Black Hat SEO), Google will penalize it and remove it's PageRank. This will leave you exchanging links with bad sites, which Google will penalize you for also. It's a good idea to check up on the sites you are exchanging links with every so often.

SEO – Off Page Optimization

Off Page Optimization consists of these ranking factors which are not location on your website:

• Which websites link to you
• The number of websites linking to you
• The Google Page Rank of the website linking to you.
• The page title of the website linking to you.
• The anchor text used in the link linking to you.
• The number and type of links linking to the website that's linking to you.
• The number of outbound links on the website that is linking to you.
• The total number of links on the website that is linking to you.
• Whether or not the websites linking to you are deemed by Google as an authority website.
• The IP Address of the websites linking to you.

Analysing the competition

Search for one of your main keywords and find the top result (we'll call this Site A). Then find the first site that  links to Site A we'll call this Site B. Just to make it clear, Site A is the top result for your keyword. Site B links to Site A. As mentioned previously, Site B's PageRank has an affect on Site A's position in the search results.

How Site B's on page linking to Site A is very important. The anchor/link text used should use primary keywords to describe the site. The title of Site B's link page is important, it should be noted if the title is using keywords relevant to Site A.

Ok, so now it goes a little deeper...

We have to check out how many sites link to Site B (inbound links) and how many links to other sites (outbound links) are on Site B. Count all the links (inbound and outbound) to get the link total. You want to get links from sites with a small link total. (Brad Callen states this will be discussed later).

"Authority" websites are best the best websites which link to yours. An authority website is one which ranks high in the search engines, contains lots of content and contain a high PageRank.

Another thing Brad mentions is to obtain the IP addess of Site B and the other sites linking to Site A. This is so that Google can see that many different sites with different IP addresses are linking to Site A. Google looks down on sites that link unneccesarily to different sites many times.

All this information for all the sites must be noted and analyzed so that you can see how the highest ranking site (Site A) is the highest rank site.   Brad mentions that there is a tool called SEO Elite (which he is selling on his own site) does all of the above steps automatically. He then goes into detail on how to use his tool for all of this.

SEO – On Page Optimizations

I know search engines crawls through web sites and index pages based on their content and keywords. That's about it, SEO is  huge business these days so I'm reaading into it at the moment. The first book I got is Brad Callen's "Search Engine Optimization Made Easy". I' m going to discuss this book and the main points in it along with other resources on the net.

A good (free) keyword research and management tool to use is Good Keywords.

PageRank

PageRank is Google's way of giving a popularity rating for a website. It is based on "votes", a vote is a link from one website to yours. The more votes you have, the higher page ranking your website will have. PageRanking is one of the factors Google looks at when ranking websites.

Another factor is the sites that link to your website. A website with a high PageRank linking to yours increases your website PageRank more than a low PageRanked website would. The quantity of pages that link to your website also affects your PageRank.

To find your sites Google Page Rank, download the Google Toolbar.

The page rank for my site (http://www.michaeldoyle.eu) is 0/10, which doesn't come as a surprise, however, it will provide me with a blank canvas to use SEO techniques. When seearching Google for the term "Michael Doyle", a wikipaedia entry is the first result. It's PageRank is 4/10. Callen's guide idicates this is low page rank and it'll be easy to gain a higher ranking. However, the only way to increasethe PageRank is to get other sites to cast your site a vote.

Google Toolbar showing PageRank

There are two search engine optimization methods: on page and off page optimization.

On page Optimization

Title

The page's title is the most important piece of text as this is what appears in the search results. It has to encourage users to click on your site. The title should be descriptive using the least amount of words as possible. Words like "and", "the" etc. should not be used. Keywords must be used.

Headers

H1 should be used to define the most important section of your website. It should be placed at the top of the page as Google reads text from top left to bottom right. Using your primary keywords is recommended if possible.

H2 & H3 should be used to define the sub-headings. Secondary keywords should be used where possible.

Text Styles - Bold, Italicise

Use on keywords in a paragraph, however, do not over do it. Google may penalise you for it.

Images

Give your image files appropriate names (not 01.jpg), try to use keywords in the image file names. Use keywords with ALT text, but add in "image" or "graphic" as well. If not, Google may see it as spam. This applies to the filename also. Always include the title tag in the image (this is the tool tip text that appears).

Forcing Google to read your content first

If you have a two-column layout using the leftmost for navigation, Google will read this first. However, placing in an empty div at the top of this column should force Google to read the right content (the main body) first.

Summary

On page optimization won't have a huge affect on your PageRank, however, a well formed page will be more easily accessible to search engines as well as your visitors. Many falsely believe that tweaking their Keyword Density and where those keywords are placed will have a big effect on your rankings. Keyword Density refers to the amount of time a keywords appear on a page, compared to the total number of words on the page. Off page optimization makes a huge difference to the sucess of your site compared to on page.