EzSEO Newsletter # 79
May 15, 2005 by Andy
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EzSEO Newsletter # 79
Andy Williams ez SEO
ez-search-engine-optimization.com
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This week:
1. Google – webmaster guidelines
2. Setting up a Blog – fr-ee tutorial
3. Secondary keywords
4. Other Stuff
Hi again
This week I want to have a close look at the guidelines produced by Google. With Google applying penalties to sites that don’t follow these guidelines, we should all be using the help provided by Google to ensure our sites are within the rules.
I also have news of a fr-ee tutorial by Chip Tarver, and a few bits and pieces including how I find secondary keywords to help theme my own web pages.
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1. Google – webmaster guidelines
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If you want to do well in Google, you must follow their guidelines as you build your pages.
You can read the full Google guidelines.
Let’s go through some of the points.
Under the section Design and Content Guidelines, there are some useful tips on how you link the pages of your site together.
GOOGLE: “Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.”
This should make sense. If a page has no links to it, the search engines cannot find it. In addition, links pointing to pages help that page rank well (because of the influence of link text).
GOOGLE: “Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages.”
A sitemap is there to help users, but the search engines use them to find new pages. When you add a new page to your site, add a link on the sitemap, and the search engines will find it. If you want the spiders coming back to your sitemap frequently, consider adding an RSS feed to your sitemap. Last week I mentioned some software that makes adding a feed to your site very simple, so there is no excuse for not using the technology available to you.
GOOGLE: “Create a useful, information-rich site and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.”
Here we have a reference to content. Quality content is the way forward. Page generators that create 1000s of pages with no unique content are not going to survive much longer.
GOOGLE: “Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.”
An invitation to use primary/secondary keywords – see section 3 of this newsletter.
GOOGLE: “Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn’t recognize text contained in images.”
An indication here how highly Google ranks keywords, especially in text links. For a well optimized site, I do not recommend using fancy navigation buttons built with javascript of images. Good old fashioned text links will help your site get indexed better, and rank higher.
GOOGLE: “Make sure that your TITLE and ALT tags are descriptive and accurate. ”
Reading between the lines – don’t stuff keywords. Write these tags naturally and with ALT tags, make sure they reflect the image (since these tags are used by blind visitors). The title tag is very important, so do use your primary keyword in the title. However, be careful with ALT tags. Keyword stuffing there is likely to result in a penalty.
GOOGLE: “Check for broken links and correct HTML.”
Do you have any broken links in your site? These can cause problems. Additionally, you should verify your HTML using a service like:
http://www.htmlvalidator.com
Invalid HTML could be affecting your rankings.
In the Technical Guidelines, there are a few good tips as well:
GOOGLE: “Use a text browser such as Lynx to examine your site, because most search engine spiders see your site much as Lynx would. If fancy features such as Javascript, cookies, session ID’s, frames, DHTML, or Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site. ”
Speaks for itself really. A lot of new webmasters like to load their pages with fancy animations, scripts and eye-candy. Avoid them unless absolutely necessary.
Here is an interesting point:
GOOGLE: “Once your site is online, submit it to Google at http://www.google.com/addurl.html. ”
Many marketers including myself, never submit sites at this URL. My advice here is to add a link from a page already in Google, and let Google find the site for itself. I don’t think I have submitted a page at this URL for over 2 years, and my new sites get found within days, using this linking technique.
GOOGLE: “Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!. ”
Since directories are highly valued by Google, try to get your site listed in them. These directories will provide a quick route to getting indexed, as well as provide valuable PR and link reputation for your site. The way Google probably sees directories listings is that if the site is there, it is quality (since places like DMoz are edited by humans).
If you don’t read all of the guidelines, you should at least print out the Quality Guidelines – Basic principles section.
GOOGLE: “Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don’t deceive your users, or present different content to search engines than you display to users.”
Here is a clear warning to webmasters. Don’t use tricks, and don’t over-optimize your pages.
As I always say “if it makes you nervous, don’t do it”.
Google themselves say something very similar here:
GOOGLE: “Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”
GOOGLE: “Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighbourhoods” on the web as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.”
This is a clear indication that Google does not like reciprocal links. In addition, there is a warning there that linking to a penalised site can cause your own site to get penalised. A site that is carefully controlling their linking, will be able to spot bad sites, and avoid penalties. A site that links to all and sundry wont, and are therefore likely to get into trouble.
GOOGLE: “Don’t use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our terms of service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.”
This guideline warns against software that automatically checks rankings or other automated tasks. If you are using a rank checker, make sure that software uses the Google API key (which Google introduced to help webmasters) which can then check Google safely. This API Key limits the number of automated queries the software can do, and keeps you within safe “Google limits”.
The Quality Guidelines – Specific recommendations sections should act as your checklist of things not to do. Here is the list:
Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
Don’t employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
Don’t send automated queries to Google.
Don’t load pages with irrelevant words.
Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
Keeping within Google’s guidelines is so important if you want your site listed. I highly recommend you print out the entire set of guidelines and read them again and again until you are familiar with them.
If you see some software advertised and wonder whether to buy it, go through the guidelines and see if that software meets them. If it does not, don’t buy it. Similarly, if you buy something that you then find out breaks Google’s guidelines, return it and get a refund.
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2. Setting up a Blog – fr-ee tutorial
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Chip Tarver is an experienced webmaster, and all round good guy. He wrote to me a couple of weeks ago about a report he is giving away, that shows step by step how to setup a blog. With my recent focus on blogs and RSS feeds, he felt that some of my subscribers might benefit from this information.
For those of you who have held back because of fear of technology, you can now follow this complete and detailed report and have a blog up and running in minutes (and it wont cost you anything).
Get the report here:
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3. Secondary keywords
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One of the most frequent questions I get asked is in the choice of secondary keywords. These are the words or phrases that you use when writing your content to help theme the page so that the search engines know what your page is about. These secondary keywords also help to bring in more traffic, because they add more depth to your page, meaning that your page is found for a lot more phrases than just the primary phrase you page is built around.
Let’s look at an example.
Suppose you were building a niche site on hemorrhoids.
One of your main pages is likely to be about treating hemorrhoids. Let’s use “hemorrhoid treatment” as our primary keyword phrase for this page (it has high searches, but also high competition, so secondaries are going to be working hard to get this page ranking high for related phrases).
So how do you find secondary keywords for use on this page? Surely there cant be many possible secondaries?
Well, you have a few options for finding secondaries. There is a paid service called Thememaster which a lot of marketers use for this purpose (search Google for this one if you are interested – I have not used it, so cannot recommend it).
However, my own favourite method is using Keyword Results Analyzer. If you own it, you have all you need to find those secondaries.
I carried out research at Wordtracker for this niche, and imported them into KRA. One of the strengths of KRA is the filtering and reporting features. To find secondary keywords, I simply filter the phrases that contain the word “treat”. This will pull out all phrases containing treat, treatment etc. Since all phrases in my database are related to hemorrhoids, all phrases returned will be related to treating this condition.
KRA gives me 61 phrases that are searched for at the search engines related to hemorrhoid treatment. Now the difficulty is not how to find secondaries, it is how to choose from 61 related phrases (which is obviously too many for a single page).
Here are the 61 phrases:
Alternative Treatments Hemorrhoids
Best Hemorrhoid Treatment
Chiropractic Hemorrhoid Treatment
Cure Hemorrhoid Treatment Hemmoroids
External Hemorrhoid Treatment
Haemmaroid Treatment
Haemorrhoids Treatment
Haemorroid Treatment
Hemarroid Treatment
Hemorhoid Home Treatment
Hemorrhoid Cures And Treatments
Hemorrhoid Home Treatment
Hemorrhoid Home Treatments
Hemorrhoid Internal Treatment
Hemorrhoid Treat Holistic Herbal
Hemorrhoid Treatment
Hemorrhoid Treatment By Infrared Coagulation
Hemorrhoid Treatment By Micro Current
Hemorrhoid Treatment Cure
Hemorrhoid Treatment Drugs
Hemorrhoid Treatment Hemoids
Hemorrhoid Treatment Hemorrhoids
Hemorrhoid Treatment Hemorrhoids Common Cure For Piles
Hemorrhoid Treatment In Pregnancy
Hemorrhoid Treatment Phoenix Az
Hemorrhoid Treatments
Hemorrhoid Treatments Hemorroids
Hemorrhoidal Polyps Treatment
Hemorrhoidal Treatments
Hemorrhoidectomy Treatment
Hemorrhoids Banding Surgical Treatment
Hemorrhoids External Treatment
Hemorrhoids Symptoms Causes And Treatments
Hemorrhoids Treatment
Hemorrhoids Treatment Care
Hemorrhoids Treatment Cure Hemorr
Hemorrhoids Treatment Of
Hemorrhoids Treatment Review
Hemorrihoid Treatment
Home Hemorrhoidal Treatments
How To Treat Hemorrhoids
Internal Bleeding Hemorrhoids Hemorrhoid Treatment
Internal Hemorrhoid Herbs Treatment
Internal Hemorrhoid Treatment
Irc Hemorrhoid Treatment
Kansas City Hemorrhoid Treatment
Laser Treatment For Hemorrhoids
Med Treatment Hemorrhoid
Natural Hemorrhoid Treatment
Natural Treatment Hemorrhoids
Natural Treatment Of Hemorrhoids
Natural Treatment Of Hemorrhoids During Preganancy
Pph Hemorrhoid Treatment
Treat Hemorrhoids What To Eat
Treating Haemmeroids
Treating Hemorrhoids
Treatment For Hemorrhoids
Treatment Hemorrhoids
Treatment Of Hemorrhoids
Treatment Of Hemorrhoids During Preganancy
Type Of Doctor To Treat Hemorrhoids
If you used all of these phrases as they are, you would not only have a very large page, but you would have a very high density of certain words like treatment, treating. We obviously have to be very careful about not using a word too many times, so one of the useful features built into KRA is its unique keyword list report. This report shows you all of the unique words that make up a set of phrases. Here are the unique words that make up the above phrases:
alternative
az
banding
best
bleeding
Care
causes
chiropractic
city
coagulation
common
cure
cures
current
doctor
drugs
during
eat
external
haemerroid
haemmaroid
haemmeroids
haemorrhoids
haemorroid
hemarroid
hemmoroids
hemoids
hemorhoid
hemorr
hemorrhoid
hemorrhoidal
hemorrhoidectomy
hemorrhoids
Hemorrihoid
hemorroids
herbal
herbs
holistic
home
how
infrared
internal
irc
kansas
Laser
med
micro
natural
phoenix
piles
polyps
pph
preganancy
pregnancy
review
surgical
symptoms
treat
treating
treatment
treatments
type
What this list gives you is a set of keywords that you can use in your content where they make sense. By adding these words to your page, you can theme your page so that it matches lots of frequently searched for phrases.
For example, if you used these words:
treat
treating
treatment
treatments
on your page, you would have the chance to rank in Google for “treat hemorrhoids”, “treating hemorrhoids”, “hemorrhoid treatment” & “hemorrhoid treatments”.
By also using Mispelled variations of hemorrhoids highlighted in this list:
haemerroid
haemmaroid
haemmeroids
haemorrhoids
haemorroid
hemarroid
hemmoroids
hemorhoid
hemorrhoid
hemorrhoids
Hemorrihoid
hemorroids
together with the above treatment words, you can expect to be found for search phrases containing every combination of the mispellings when searched with a treatment phrase. That’s 48 different search phrases that your page could be found for.
Now, the above example is one I don’t necessarily recommend you follow, since all those mispellings may make your page read very badly. But you get the idea.
Perhaps a better use of this type of unique keyword list would be to target the treatment/cure style keywords.
This would not look unnatural:
alternative
Care
cure
cures
doctor
drugs
herbal
herbs
holistic
Laser
med
natural
symptoms
treat
treating
treatment
treatments
Add these into your content, together with a couple of alternative spellings, and you can have a page that can potentially rank well for large numbers of hemorrhoid treatment related phrases.
Imagine if you were a search engines, and after analysing your page for theme, you found the above words (and one or two spellings of hemorrhoid).
Would you have any difficulty deciding which theme the page was about?
KRA makes this type of analysis easy (in fact it can even find the best phrases to use as primary keywords with its Niche Within a Niche feature).
If you have a Wordtracker subscription (and it is only a few dollars a day if you want to pay as you go), KRA will help you sort through you lists, and design your pages so that search engines are not left in any doubt. And let’s face it, a happy search engine is one that is more likely to rank your pages higher.
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4. Other Stuff
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Great news for SEO WSB users – Andrea Thomson of Golden Pine Cone fame has opened up a new template site where you can purchase fantastic templates that work with your SEO WSB software.
To see one of these templates in action, I have recompiled one of my test sites with one of her templates. The template does not match the context of the site, but this site is not a live one, it is only there for testing purposes. See the template here.
This new range of templates certainly give SEO WSB users some great options to make their sites look radically different.
Other news – There are still a few of the “revealed” April niche blueprints left (the secret ones have sold out). If you want to get one, on the Niche Blueprint homepage:
Click on the April Blueprint link top right, you will need the username and password to access the order page. This is: aprilbp (same for both username and password).
Well, that’s it for another issue. If you want to read the recent issues of this newsletter, you can read them online at my blog here.
For older newsletters, you will need to visit the old archives:
Have a great week!
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