Keyword Proximity rule state that you should always put the keywords that make up your key phrases together. Keyword Proximity can be better understood with the following example. Consider two words below.
Optimizing keywords and key-phrases
Keyword Optimization and Key-phrase optimization
When you consider both these words, the first one is good to read and is written in good English. But when it comes to search engine optimization, the second word will rank good as the keywords “Keyword Optimization” and “Key-phrase Optimization” are together and very close to each other. Sometimes, you feel that the text doesn’t look good for humans by following this rule. In such cases, make sure that the keywords are not too far from each other.
Search engine spiders are blind. They are software. They feel that a page having text with searched keyword repeated good number of times or page back linked with anchor text of that keyword is more relevant to the searched keyword.
Keyword Density can be explained as the frequency with which a keyword or a key-phrase is repeated within the text of a page. Here, the text includes "content, heading and title and anchor text."
Consider the following example
Keyword Density wonderfully explained
Keyword Density
Though both the words are almost same, the second word will rank well for the Keyword Density criteria as the density for this key phrase is 100 percent and for the previous word "keyword density wonderfully explained", it is 50 percent.
There are only two ways to increase the keyword density.
Reduce the number of words in the article or
Increase the frequency of usage of keywords.
I suggest you balance both the points above equally, as over doing anything will be triggered as spam.
Formula of keyword density :-
Number of words in the key phrase of a text * frequency with which they are repeated together / total number of words
Tip: The Keyword density should not be more than 2% and less than 0.5%. If it exceeds 2%, then there is a possibility that most of the search engines consider your site as a spam and if it is below 0.5%, your content is considered as irrelevant. Remember, the ideal keyword density is between 0.5 percent and 2 percent.
Keyword Prominence can be explained as the way or method by which robots or bots determine the value or importance of each word in any given section.
Almost all the search engines try to identify the most important words or links on a page or in domain. As the robots or bots are software, they depend upon the HTML to understand what the text is about and how important it is. If there is no guidance from HTML on a page, then the robots depend upon the Keyword Prominence to determine the importance of each word.
Keyword Prominence says that the closer a word is to the front of analyzed area of text, the more prominent it is. Spiders or bots feel that the word used in the beginning of a text is most important and prominent when compared to rest of the text. So they assign highest value to the beginning word and words that follow are scored lower.
Consider this example
Movie from Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures Movie
Both mean the same as per humans, but if you are trying to optimize your site for the keyword “Universal Pictures”, then as per keyword prominence rule, you should use the title as “Universal Pictures Movie” as this has more prominence over the other title “Movie from Universal Pictures”.
Tip: Words that are marked between the heading tags are scored higher. Highest prominence goes to H1 tag, then H2 and H3.
Use proper keywords and key-phrases whenever you are writing content or article, building links, choosing page titles or domain names. One should have the knowledge over following concepts in order to use the keywords effectively.
Click on the above topics to see detailed explanation.
These topics concentrate on the usage of keywords, how many times keywords can be repeated in an article, effective ways to combine different keywords etc. Hence go through each topic thoroughly until you completely understand what they are.
But be careful that these techniques are used in search engine friendly way. Remember, you can get good rank by understanding and following these concepts. But if you over do anything, then you will be penalized by search engines.
Tip: Try to use Google keyword tool to know different keywords used by people around the world!!! This tool is from Google, hence its trustworthy and user friendly. Above all, its free of cost.
Do not try to waste your time on optimizing your site for business name. I do not say that you should not optimize your business name, but don’t waste too much time on that. If someone knows your business name, why do they choose search engine to find you. The people who know your business name would directly hit the web address in the address bar and come to your site. Your target should be on attracting unknown people.
Do not blindly copy the keywords of your competitors. Do some research and find out the keywords which have less competition. SEO is all about finding the keywords which are highly used by users and under-used by your competitors.
Don’t try to optimize your site for business terms. You may be well aware of that word, but it will be jargon for most of the people.
Do not stuff the articles with keywords. Humans find it frustrating.
Do not try to optimize much for single words. Instead, try to optimize for two or three set of words. Most of the people use two or three word combination to narrow down their search.
Search engine spiders or crawlers love the text. They don’t understand the videos, flash pictures and images. Everything is a block of text for them. The more a page has text, the more the spiders love that page. And the love of spider brings loads and loads of traffic to your site. Hence, to get a good rank and top the search engine results pages, you need to have a site with lot of good content.
Following are certain guidelines that one should follow while writing content for their page.
Make sure that you write a content or article for humans and not for spiders or some other software.
When a human user or visitor reads an article on your site, it shouldn't make him cry or laugh!!!
Do not stuff the article with full of keywords. If you do so, search engines will penalize you for spamming keywords.
The content should be short and simple. It should be informative and easily understandable for any one.
Make sure that the data and information on your site is 100% reliable and not misleading. If that is not the case, people lose faith on you and your site and they won’t be interested in visiting it again.
Do not divert away from the topic at any point of time because that would make the viewer frustrated.
Keep yourself in the shoes of visitor and write the articles. Understand what people want from your articles, and give them what exactly they want.
Use simple English and make sure that there are no grammatical or spelling mistakes.
Both are equally important and essential for ranking good in any search engine. On page SEO is like heart and off page SEO techniques can be compared with the soul of optimization techniques. If one fails, the other will be useless. Hence use all the resources available to you to optimize the site.
On Page SEO techniques cover topics like
content writing
choosing proper keywords and key-phrases
using those proper keywords and key-phrases effectively in the content
Choosing right keywords is a very important step in SEO. Keywords are like ingredients while preparing a dish. Just like you end up preparing a worst meal when you choose wrong ingredients, your website optimization also goes for a toss if you do not choose right keywords.
Let me give you an example on how important is to choose right keywords. Let us assume that you want to get more visitors to your website that sells spectacles and goggles for very cheap rate. The apparent keyword choice would be “goggles and sunglasses”. But if you use this keyword to optimize your site, then you are competing against 3,720,000 websites (type the keyword goggles and sunglasses in the search box of goggle). Now, try typing the word “sunglasses and goggles” in Google. The search result returns 393,000 results. Great!!!!!! That means you are just competing against 393,000 websites. Even a kid of class five will say that he would prefer to compete against 393,000 websites rather than three million plus websites.
What you have done till now is just half the battle. You also should know how many people are searching the internet using your keywords. Because, if no one is searching the web world using your keywords, then what is the use of optimizing your site such ones????
Follow the following guidelines while choosing the keywords
The searches for your keywords should be more than or equal to 2,000 per month
The number of websites using your keywords should be in thousands in Google.
The number of websites having backlinks for your keyword shouldn’t be more than one thousand in Yahoo.
Understand the above guidelines line by line. If you have any doubt read it again. Read them until you understand them. Once understood, digest them.
Web hosting service is a kind of internet service that lets website owners make their site accessible to users via World Wide Web. Web hosting companies provide space on the serves they own or taken on lease. So the clients have to buy the space from the web hosting companies to store the pages and data related their website.
There many types of web hosting services, of which few are worth discussing. Web hosting has become very cheap these days due to increase in th competition and companies charge the clients depending upon the services requested by the users or clients.
The following are important types of web hosting services
1) Free Web Hosting Service
2) Shared Hosting Service
3) Dedicated Web Hosting Service
4) Cloud Hosting
Free Web Hosting:-
Free web hosting services are offered by many companies but the services will be very limited. There can also be advertisements by the hosting service company on your site as the service is free.
Shared Web Hosting:-
Shared web hosting as the name itself demonstrates, is a web hosting service in which many domains share a common server. That means each website owner or client is given specific amount of space on the server. This space on the server allocated to each user is called as Web Space. That means the users are sharing the web space of that particular server.
Dedicated Web Hosting:-
In this type of hosting service, the client gets the full access over the server. No other website or domain is hosted on that server. In dedicated hosting service, the user doesn’t own the server, however gains full control over the server.
Cloud hosting:-
Cloud hosting is creating quiet a buzz these days. In cloud hosting service, you only pay for what you use. If nobody is using or viewing your site, you don’t need to pay. It is very much similar to your water bill or taxi meter. When you use them, the meter keeps running and when u are done using, the meter stops and you don’t need to pay until you use it again.
In cloud hosting, the data is stored on different servers unlike dedicated or shared hosting services, where data is stored on single server. Data is retrieved from different servers when a user requests for it. This is more advanced hosting service and is gaining more popularity these days.
Watch the youtube videos for better understanding on cloud hosting
Search engine result page is abbreviated as SERP. When a user enters a keyword or a group of keywords in the search box, the search engine shows results in a page. This page is called search engine result page.
Server is either a software or hardware which helps in delivering content to viewers, so that the data can be accessed through internet. Server stores the data of a site and retrieves it whenever a user visits the site or downloads some content.
You have a domain and wonderful and nicely designed site. But there should be something that can hold the data of your site. That is exactly what a server does. It stores the data related to a site and fetches it, whenever a user visits that site. Without a server, it is not possible to display your site on internet as there will be no source which can fetch data for the user. Hence user can only see a blank page when your site address is entered in the address bar.
Domain is the identity of a website. Just like human beings need names to identify, refer and call each other, websites need domains. Domains help in creating an identity to a website so that people all over the world who have access to internet can view and share it with others.
Example
www.yahoo.com ----people identify Yahoo! with this domain name.
Hence domains introduce the respective websites to the World Wide Web, making it accessible to people.
Off page SEO is all the techniques that one can get other site owners to use which in turns boosts the rank of the site.
Off page SEO is very important as it is called heart and soul of successful SEO campaign. Accepted that on page SEO is equally important but the world comes to know the existence of the site only with off page SEO techniques. Though a site has wonderful content and very well designed, but if no one knows about the existence of that site and no one has referred it as an authoritative source, why will any search engine notice it and rank it???
Off page techniques include back link building, article submission to websites like article base, ezine articles etc, directory submission, forum participation etc.
Meta tag is the coding used in the HTML of Meta data. Tags are instructions in HTML coding and the tags in Meta data are called as Meta tags.
Consider below example
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Yahoo! Mail: The best web-based email!</TITLE>
<META name=”description” content=” Description of the site”>
<META name=”keywords” content=”free mail, yahoo mail, mail ”>
</HEAD>
Each line is called as a tag in the above example and as these tags are used in Meta data, they are called Meta tags.
Explanation of each tag
Head Tag:
Any HTML will start and end with HEAD tag. All the coding is done in between head tag. Hence, a HTML document will have a HEAD tag for sure.
TITLE Tag:
A TITLE tag tells the browser what message it should display on the reverse bar when a user visits the site.
Look at the picture below
Yahoo should have used the following title tag
<TITLE>Yahoo! Mail: The best web-based email! </TITLE>, and that is the reason, internet explorer browser is showing that message in the reverse bar!!!
<META name=”description” content=” Description of a site ”>
Meta description tag allows you to influence the description of the site in the search results of some search engines.
Consider the example of Yahoo mail again. When someone enters the keyword “Yahoo Mail" in Google, it shows the description of yahoo mail in the following format.
Look at the description, "Yahoo! India Mail offers you free email with unlimited mail & photo storage, includes spam & virus protection, chat & free text sms from your inbox."
Though Yahoo! cannot have access the way the major search engine like Google shows the description in their search results, but it can still influence some of the search engines like Teoma.
Meta keyword tag is not effective anymore as most of the search engines ignore this tag. But for your information, Meta keyword tag tells the crawler of the search engine, what are the main keywords of a site.
On page is referred to all the changes that one can make to their site to optimize it. On page optimization techniques are used on your own site.On page Optimization includes title of the page, headings, internal links, content of the site, image alt tags, choosing proper domain and hosting company, Meta data.
Meta data is information about a site in HTML language. Meta data is also called as Meta information or meta-data. In simple words, Meta data tells the search engines about the data on a particular site. That is the reason, Meta data is usually termed as data about data.
Initially, most of the search engines used to depend upon Meta data for the information of a particular site. But, when many people started spamming the meta information and manipulating the rankings in search engines by updating incorrect information in meta data which is not at all relevant to their sites, search engines stopped ranking the sites based upon the meta data.
Though major search engines like Google, stopped looking at meta-data to gather information about a site, some search engines still rely on the Meta data. Hence it is good to use Meta data in the website, but one cannot expect good ranking by just depending upon Meta data.
Meta data usually looks like this:-
<HEAD>
<TITLE>WHAT IS META DATA</TITLE>
<META name=”description” content=” All you wanted to know about Meta data”>
<META name=”keywords” content=”meta data, meta tag, meta information”>
</HEAD>
Meta data is used in between head tags and usually after title tag.
For more information about each line in the above example, check “Meta Tags”
Google PageRank is the method followed by Google for calculating a webpage’s importance and relevance depending upon the number and quality of sites linking to it. PageRank is named after Google's co-founder Larry Page.
Google ranks all the sites that it indexes on a scale of 0 to 10. The higher the rank, the higher is the chance to get placed in the top of listings in the Search Engine Pages for the relevant searches.
Example:
I have a site based upon search engine optimization techniques. If I have wonderful content and good number of backlinks, then there are chances that Google will award a good rank to my site. Suppose that my site is ranked as 9 by Google. That means if someone searches the Google for search engine techniques, the chances that my site is shown in the top 5 search results of the first page of search engine result pages are higher.
Now if someone searches for comics, though I have a page rank of 9, I will not be shown in the search results as my site is not relevant to comics.
Hence, Google not only checks the page rank, but also relevancy of the page to user’s keyword along with different other factors which Google keep as secret.
Bot can also be called as spider, crawler. Bot is the software that visits the websites and stores the information related to the visited site. When a bot visits a site, technically it is referred as crawling. Based upon various factors described by the search engine, the bot assigns a specific value to each site. So when a user enters a keyword in the search box, based upon the information gathered by the bot or spider, the search engine puts various websites in front of the user.
Almost all the search engines rely on crawlers. It is not possible to visit various websites manually. It is even more difficult or rather impossible to store the data from various websites on the internet, retrieve it and show the relevant data to the user. Hence the major search engines rely on software called bot or crawler or spiders.
Black Hat Seo techniques are the unethical ways of optimizing the site. Black hat seo techniques can also be explained as the methods or techniques which are prohibited by search engines. One can boost the rank of their website by following black hat seo techniques, but once search engines come to know that a particular site is following such techniques, they will penalize such sites and remove them from their search index. Most of the people depend upon search engines to find out their required stuff and hence one cannot afford to get penalized by search engines and loose the traffic directed by them.
Backlinks are the number of sites pointing towards your site. Backlinks have become very important these days with the emergence of search engines.
To simplify the word back link, lets see an example
If a site X has an anchor text, with an anchor link of site Y, then Y is said to have one backlink.
X----------------->Y
Lets see an other example.
If i write an article on my site and say, "Wikipedia is a great site and have lot of information in it.I simply love this site."
If I anchored the text "Information" with link "http://www.wikipedia.org/", then I can say, Wikipedia has gained one back link from my site for the word "information" and whenever someone clicks the word "information" on my site, it directs the user to the site "http://www.wikipedia.org/ "
Alt tags are alternative tags that appear in the place of pictures or images when browser preferences are set as text only, which means browser doesn't show the images. Alt tags are very important factor which should be never overlooked.
There are two benefits of adding an alt tag to the image
1) Search engines understand what the image is about because crawlers or spiders are blind and they don’t understand the images. For them everything is text. So in order to tell the spiders what the image is about, it is always necessary to add an alt tag to the image
2) The visually impaired people can understand the image using text reading software like screen reader.
Though the use of text browsers has come down to negligible levels with the wide spread penetration of broadband, the visually impaired people still use the software like screen reader and need a complete description of the images which is only possible with the alt tag.
Anchor text link is HTML code which tells the browser that the text is anchored and that it should direct the visitor to the site specified by anchor text link when it is clicked.
The HTML to anchor a text is
<ahref="url of the site">Text</a>
for example in the statement " This blog is based on search engine optimization ", the following HTML code is used
This blog is based on search engine <ahref="http://getvisitors4free.blogspot.com/">optimization</a>,
Thus, <ahref> tag is the HTML code used to make the word "optimization" an anchor text.
Thus when some one clicks the anchor text "optimization", the anchor text link directs the user to http://getvisitors4free.blogspot.com/.
Anchor text link is the link or website name used in the anchor text. In the above example "http://getvisitors4free.blogspot.com/" is anchor text link and optimization is called the anchor text.
Consider the following statement for text anchor example :-
" This blog is based on search engine optimization "
The sentence has 8 words. All the words are normal except the word “optimization” which looks a little bit different. When you move your mouse over the word “optimization”, you get an option to click the text. Here, the word “optimization” is called as the anchor text. A hyperlink (or in simple words “website domain”) is placed behind the text anchor “optimization” which is clickable but invisible to the users.
Anchor Text is a clickable text. Anchor Text is also called as link title or link label or text anchor. When someone clicks an anchor text, it will take the viewer to different page or other part of the same page.
SEO terms are the words which are used while optimizing any site. SEO terms are difficult to understand for most of the beginners. Without the knowledge on the terminology, it is very confusing and difficult to learn and understand. Not only in the study of seo techniques, this principle can be applied anywhere. So before mastering something, learn the words used to make it.
Here are few words commonly used in the study of search engine optimization
Key phrases are the set of keywords used in a meaningful way. Key phrases can also be explained as the combination of one keyword with other words or keywords.
For example,
If someone wishes to get more visitors whenever a user enters the words "optimization" or "search engine optimization" in the search box of search engines, then "optimization" is called as keyword and any word like "search engine optimization" which is a combination of keyword and any other words becomes key-phrase.
Search engines love the text and so do humans. But the rule is that the text should be good and understandable. To attract people, the content should be meaningful and simple so that viewer can understand what you wanted to say.
Suppose, if we compare your website with a good dish then keywords are ingredients to prepare that good dish. As you all know, how disgusting it could be if something goes wrong in ingredients, in the same way, if keywords are not selected and used properly, then one cannot expect a good rank for his/her website.
