Basic SEO practices for newbies:

Codythebest said:

Let me give you an example with the Mustang thing, since there is no tools needed.
You have a Mustang site, let's say, selling auto parts for Mustang.
And you have several pages in your site, selling, wheels, doors, seats, you name it.
You realize that your page about the wheels for mustang is nowhere in google. So go on Google and type for example " ford mustang wheels " and see who on top. Check their keywords (in the source) and title. Use those keywords yourself. Add them in your page and you'll climb the SERP for that page. Repeat for your others pages...

Get a free IPB on Ares to track your SERP position

Click to expand...

Gotcha!

Is it even possible to get "deeper" information about the page?

Specifically, is there a resource (a site, service, software) somewhere that will provide detailed information about a particular page on the Internet (i.e., how many backlinks it has, what keywords it gets traffic for, etc.)?

I would think that knowing these statistics about your competition would be extremely valuable. Amongst other things, they could be used to modify a page so that it attracts the traffic the competition's page was receiving - by focusing on the things that are sending traffic to the competition's page.

Also, what is a "free IPB on Ares"?

This is a great post. Thank you very much. One question I did have was which is better?

If I use a domain name with just an s at the end of it or something like reviews.

an example would be yoursites or yoursitereview. I am trying to get a keyword domain, but the keyword is already taken, and there is not a lot of room for change.

Thanks again for this great post. It is probably the most informational helpful post I have read on BHW.

bigleftie said:

First - GREAT thread! I learned so much from this thread alone.

I have XML and HTML sitemaps on my site. The HTML contains links to each of the pages in the site, is very plain and only contains the links themselves.

The pages themselves are named for the keywords they address.

For example - if I had a site about men shoes, my sitemap might look like this
Mens Work Shoes
Mens Casual Shoes
Mens Athletic Shoes

I do not have any descriptive text except for the link anchor itself.

Are you suggesting using something like the following instead?

Mens Work Shoes
We have lots of mens work shoes. Take a look here, blah blah blah mens work shoes.

Mens Casual Shoes
We have loads of mens casual shoes available. You probalby wanna look here, blah blah blah.

shoes.Mens Athletic Shoes
We have more mens athletic shoes than we know what to do with. Check out our sneakers and blah blah blah here.

Click to expand...

Yeah, you have the exact idea, however, be sure and not repeat what you have in the link in the description. You can mention ' men's shoes ' for example but don't use the exact links phrase in the description, as this doesn't help you. It is considered keyword stuffing and actually can take away from the link's effectiveness over a short time.

I would got with 2-3 sentences. Keep them simple and direct but, give a little information and insight on the product/service. It builds character that your customers can relate to, gives them more info on what you are offering to show them, ( which is ALWAYS A PLUS! ), and giving them proof that you actually know where the link goes and what is actually on the other side.

This builds security, trust, reliability, and confidence in buying from you because they get what you say they are going to get.

People are all about the ' magic sales bullet ' line that is going to make everyone brainwashed into buying their stuff. You really want to know what that is, I've just given it to you in a nutshell...it is about treating people with the same trust, honesty, loyalty and respect that you should want and expect from everyone you meet.

Think of it always from ' what you'd like to experience if you were the customer '. Also, think of whatever you do in life, not just marketing as the end result being based 100% on what you invest in it. It is like planting a garden, you will only get the quality of produce from it that you invest in the foundation that produces the end items.

If you start with great seeds, healthy, rich soil and take outstanding care of the plants by feeding, watering and weeding...you will be way more happy with the results. Business is the exact same way. You get from it what you put into it.

Take that into consideration when you are doing everything, especially writing links, content and copy, as these are the actual front line weapons in your front-end **************. If they fail to do their jobs, the entire chain of command falls with them, due to a proper website funnel being a domino effect of the worst kind. There are so many leading threads into the main line that any one of them could break the chain and take the whole line down.

When you take this approach, your whole business model will become air tight after reviewing how many leads you have open, just waiting to be pushed over.

fvcktheworld said:

This is a great post. Thank you very much. One question I did have was which is better?

If I use a domain name with just an s at the end of it or something like reviews.

an example would be yoursites or yoursitereview. I am trying to get a keyword domain, but the keyword is already taken, and there is not a lot of room for change.

Thanks again for this great post. It is probably the most informational helpful post I have read on BHW.

Click to expand...

Frankly, I say it does hold some effectiveness but isn't a must. I tell clients this all the time, about how keywords don't make or break a site...proof: Google, ebay, ask, bing, amazon, target, etc.

All of those sites are uniquely named for word of mouth, easy-to-remember/fun-to-say domain names...which clearly have NOTHING to do with their domain services, other than ' google ' that specifically turned their brand into a verbal catch phrase as common as ' coke ' or ' pop ' being the generics for any soda.

Good keywords, solid seo, and strong, informative content are all you need to get a site ranked and noticed. The product/services sold are just the money end of it.

Food for thought.

OK, there you go. That's that basics of SEO.
- Just have to rinse a repeat a *insertridiculousprefix*-illion times.

Good info, thanks everyone!

Thanks for sharing. I want to learn as match as I can about this

Highly appreciate this GreyWolf!

This quite frankly has eliminated a few questions I had; and should stop a few repeats on the main board. Thank you, this information is very valuable indeed! Once you've covered the basics, you can't do anything but improve, so once again, thank you!

Great post, I learned a ton of new stuff!

I've heard that in your h1, h2 tags...the closer your keyword is to the beginning, the better. i.e "keyword" blah,blah blah is better than blah,blah,blah "keyword"

Informative

great posts mate...

great posts guys...

Robert Merritt said:

I've heard that in your h1, h2 tags...the closer your keyword is to the beginning, the better. i.e "keyword" blah,blah blah is better than blah,blah,blah "keyword"

Click to expand...

Put your keyword in h1 at the the beginning and 2/3% density thru out in normal text and at the end enclose it with <b>your keyword</b>.

thanks for the info guys, very helpful

Perfect info for the noob marketer...

GreyWolf this is a great starter article... definitely bookmarked it for future reference. I'm just starting to launch my own sites and this is very helpful

bigwali said:

Put your keyword in h1 at the the beginning and 2/3% density thru out in normal text and at the end enclose it with <b>your keyword</b>.

Click to expand...

Actually, research has shown that is doesn't matter since all search engine spiders pin-point keywords as they come to them and catalog a reference point in relevant combination of the content on the overall site bearing where and how they are ranked for more/less pulling power. It isn't about the position, it is about the keyword and the relevant content relation to the keyword within your site.

This is the reason that in the old keyword stuffing days, people would repeat their keyword over and over and rank high. Now, it is all about the keyword and the content in relation to it. You can take a website and test for yourself. The position has nothing to do with it. In hte case of a header tag situation specifically like this one, it is about having the keyword in a content driven phrase, not the position of the word itself.

Since I can't use my keyword in my domain name, it's taken already, can I use it as a subdomain and optimize some internal page. For example:

www.domainname.com/keyword

If I use my keyword as a subdomain whether this will improve my ranking?

This is awesome, thank you for posting this. I plan on committing all of it to memory!