On Page Optimization

1. Keyword Analyzing, research and testing / Keyword selection

• Keyword research - It’s most important before optimizing the web pages. Beside the popular generic terms. Sure they get much more traffic. But most of the money is to be made focusing on phrases or related phrases. In other words for example don’t target “hotels” or “hotel reviews. Target “Delhi hotel reviews”, “Mumbai hotel review”, and “hotel guide Bangalore” and like that.

• Order of keywords - Some SEO experts believe that placing keywords higher on the page gives that page a boost in the search rankings. That opinion is not shared by all search engine observers, however. In general, it’s better to sprinkle the keywords throughout the on page copy in a normal writing fashion. Natural sounding content is much easier to read, and could even score as well in the search rankings as any special placements on the page.

Articles on Search Engine Optimization - Mr SEO

Do we create sites for user or the engines?

What’s more important? Creating sites for users or the engines? The answer is both.

Primarily a site should be designed for the user, with search engines in mind. Google tends to talk out both sides of their mouth when they say, “Don’t do anything special for the engines”. Yet, they create a webmaster tool center where you can submit a sitemap, and get information about how the engines see your site, errors and what key phrases your site ranks for. That gives new site owners a little bit of confusion.

I like sites that are easy to navigate, pleasing to the eye and that help sell whatever it is you need to. Pages should be set up as landing pages. This way you can give the visitor everything they need to make a purchase or fill out a form. At the same time you can optimize these pages for the engines and use the pages for your PPC campaigns. I believe in doing sites this way. It brings the visitor a much better experience.

The perfect site is not only user friendly, but optimized for the engines. You need to target where people go to in order to provide them with the information or product they need. There is nothing worse than having people landing on a page that is optimized for a phrase but offers no information about it.. It brings the user a bad experience and you a missed sale or lead. Once you have a page optimized, you can streamline the transition from viewing what you have to offer to facilitating a purchase. You can also provide related content and links. This, in turn, will help with you PPC because Google is now checking to see how relevant your landing pages are to the keywords you buy.

In the grand scheme of things, you do need to optimize your site. However, if you do not have usability for the user, your traffic won’t convert. Non-converting traffic is worse than having no traffic at all. It’s a webmasters nightmare.

Google Keywords & A Test Of Links & Webmaster Radio

Google Keywords

Google has just started showing the estimated monthly search numbers in their keyword suggestion tool. For the first time in a long while we're now able to see the estimated search numbers on the engine who's results we most want to see the results of.

As a word of warning, after using it and comparing the numbers with the click through
volume for a number of phrases, the number appear to be a bit high - that's because it defaults to Broad Match but you can select Exact Match from the drop-down and get the the numbers you're looking for.

You'll find this new feature added to the Google tool here.

A Test Of Links

Also, there was an interesting test run by Johannes Beusand published on the MarketingFan.com site regarding the value of multiple links to a single page on residing on a single page of a website. He basically strives to answer the question, if there are two or more links on a single page of a site and they point to a single page on another site - how are they treated?

I'm not going to be mean and note everything from the site here and steal their traffic. :) You'll find the link to this interesting test here.

Webmaster Radio

And today on Webmaster Radio Jim Hedger and I had the pleasure of interviewing Kevin Ryan - the man behind SES. Kevin discussed the show, the organizing of it, and some of the great sessions that'll be held in San Jose.

After that (and some ranting by both Jim and myself about the stupid fees we Canadians are charged for cell phones and specifically web usage on them) we had on Dave Szetela from Clix Marketing discussing the recent changes Google has made to the quality scores for it's AdWords advertisers.