SEO - Tactics & Methods

SEO techniques are classified into two broad categories:

• White Hat SEO - Techniques that search engines recommend as part of a good design.
• Black Hat SEO - Techniques that search engines do not approve and attempt to minimize the effect of. These techniques are also known as spamdexing.

White Hat SEO

An SEO tactic is considered as White Hat if it has the following features:

• It conforms to the search engine's guidelines.
• It does not involve in any deception.
• It ensures that the content a search engine indexes, and subsequently ranks, is the same content a user will see.
• It ensures that a web page content should have been created for the users and not just for the search engines.
• It ensures good quality of the web pages.
• It ensures availability of useful content on the web pages.

Always follow a White Hat SEO tactic and do not try to fool your site visitors. Be honest and you will definitely get something more.

Black Hat or Spamdexing

An SEO tactic, is considered as Black Hat or Spamdexing if it has the following features:

• Attempting ranking improvements that are disapproved by the search engines and/or involve deception.
• Redirecting users from a page that is built for search engines to one that is more human friendly.
• Redirecting users to a page that was different from the page the search engine ranked.
• Serving one version of a page to search engine spiders/bots and another version to human visitors. This is called Cloaking SEO tactic.
• Using hidden or invisible text or with the page background color, using a tiny font size or hiding them within the HTML code such as "no frame" sections.
• Repeating keywords in the metatags, and using keywords that are unrelated to the website content. This is called metatag stuffing.
• Calculated placement of keywords within a page to raise the keyword count, variety, and density of the page. This is called keyword stuffing.
• Creating low-quality web pages that contain very little content but are instead stuffed with very similar keywords and phrases. These pages are called Doorway or Gateway Pages.
• Mirror websites by hosting multiple websites - all with conceptually similar content but using different URLs.
• Creating a rogue copy of a popular website which shows contents similar to the original to a web crawler, but redirects web surfers to unrelated or malicious websites. This is called page hijacking.

Always stay away from any of the above Black Hat tactics to improve the rank of your site. Search engines are smart enough to identify all the above properties of your site and ultimately you are not going to get anything.

SEO, SMO & SEM Techniques

Framework for SEO

SEO - Optimized Keywords

A keyword is a term that is used to match with the query a person enters into a search engine to find specific information. Most people enter search phrases that consist of two to five words. Such phrases may be called search phrases, keyword phrases, query phrases, or just keywords. Good keyword phrases are specific and descriptive.

The following concepts related to keywords, help in optimizing the keywords on a web page.

Keyword Frequency

This is calculated as how often does a keyword appear in a website title or description. You do not want to go overboard with frequency, however, since on some engines if you repeat a word too many times, you are be penalized for "spamming" or keyword stuffing.

In general though, repeat your keyword in the document as many times as you can get away with, and up to 3-7 times in your list of metatags.

Keyword Weight

It refers to the number of keywords appearing on your web page compared to the total number of words appearing on that same page. Some search engines consider this while determining the rank of your website for a particular keyword search.

One technique that often works well is to create some smaller pages, generally just a paragraph long that emphasizes a particular keyword. By keeping the overall number of words to a minimum, you can increase the "weight" of the keyword you are emphasizing.

Keyword Proximity

It refers to the placement of keywords on a web page in relation to each other or, in some cases, in relation to other words with a similar meaning as the queried keyword.

For search engines, that grade a keyword match by keyword proximity, the connected phrase home loans will outrank a citation that mentions home mortgage loans assuming that you are searching only for the phrase "home loans".

Keyword Prominence

It is a measure of how early or high up on a page, the keywords are found. Having keywords in the first heading and in the first paragraph (first 20 words or so) on a page are best.

Keyword Placement

Where your keywords are placed on a page is very important. For example, in most engines, placing the keywords in the Title of the page, or in the Heading tags will give it more relevancy. On some engines, placing keywords in the link text, the part that is underlined on the screen in a browser, can add more relevancy to those words.

Best Places to Put Keywords

Here is a list of places where you should try to use your main keywords.

• Keywords in the <title> tag(s).
• Keywords in the <meta name="description">.
• Keywords in the <meta name="keyword">.
• Keywords in <h1> or other headline tags.
• Keywords in the <a href="http://yourcompany.com">keywords</a> link tags.
• Keywords in the body copy.
• Keywords in alt tags.
• Keywords in <!-- insert comments here> comments tags.
• Keywords in the URL or website address.

Finding Keywords

There are many different ways to find keywords for your website. Some good keyword ideas are: 

• The potential words, people would use to find your product or service.
• The problems that your prospective customers may try to solve with your product or service.
• Keyword tags on competitor's websites.
• Visible page copy on competitor's websites.
• Related search suggestions on top search engines.
• Using an online tool such as Google Keyword Tool
• By analyzing your website carefully and finding out proper keywords. This task can be done by expert SEO copywriters.
• Pay attention to stemming for your keywords - particularly to what the root word is and what Google considers to be a match for that word, when optimizing pages over time.
• You can do brainstorming to identify correct keywords for your site.

What is Click-through rate?

Click-through rate (or click-thru rate) tells you how many people are clicking through to your site from a third-party. For example from a link, search engine, banner, advertising or email campaign.

Your click-through rate tells you the success of your campaigns. Use this knowledge to determine which strategy is the most effective and focus your energy there.

A ratio showing how often people who see your ad end up clicking it. CTR can be used to gauge how well your keywords and ads are performing.

• CTR is the number of clicks that your ad receives divided by the number of times your ad is shown expressed as a percentage (clicks ÷ impressions = CTR).
  
  For example, if you had 5 clicks and 1000 impressions, then your CTR would be 0.5%. Here's how it's calculated:
  
• Each of your ads and keywords has their own CTRs that you can see listed in your account.
• A high CTR is a good indication that users find your ads helpful and relevant. CTR also contributes to your keyword's expected CTR (a component of Quality Score), which can affect your costs and ad position. Note that a good CTR is relative to what you're advertising and on which networks.
• You can use CTR to gauge which ads and keywords are successful for you and which need to be improved. The more your keywords and ads relate to each other and to your business, the more likely a user is to click on your ad after searching on your keyword phrase.

What's A "Good" Click-Through Rate?

This is a hotly debated topic: what constitutes a good click-through rate?

From a purely statistical standpoint, it depends. Take a look at Yahoo's answer to the "what's a good click-through rate" question:

The honest answer to the question is, “It depends.” Click-through rates are naturally going to vary from campaign to campaign, and even from keyword to keyword. Everything involved in the way your ad is displayed plays a part, from your ad copy to the ad’s ranking on the results page.

So while you want to have a "high" click-through rate, there's really no magic number. Average click-through rate will vary by industry, and you’re expected CTR depends on your ad's position, among other factors. Generally speaking, as we mentioned above, you want as high a click-through rate as possible.

Except when you don't.

When Higher Click-Through Rates Are Actually Bad For Business

If a keyword isn't pertinent to your business or isn't going to generate sales, leads, branding gains, etc. then a high click-through rate for that term is actually bad for business. The reasoning for this is fairly clear:

• You're paying for every click.
• A lot of clicks generate a lot of ad spend.
• Sometimes you're generating clicks on keywords that are priced too high, and won't turn a profit even if they convert.
• Irrelevant terms and clicks are just spending money without bringing in additional business.

So you don't always want higher click-through rates: what you want are high CTRs on keywords that are:

• Relevant - Have to do with your ad text, your landing page, and your offering.
• Affordable - Keywords that aren't going to be profit-prohibitive.

So, in a nut shell, a good CTR means first targeting the right words, and then getting as many people as you can to click on those ads.

Achieving Strong Click-Through Rates for Your Ads

Achieving strong click-through rates in PPC, then, depends on:

• Targeted keywords to bid on.
• Cost-efficient clicks.
• Tools and methodology for closely integrating keywords with ad text and landing pages.
• The ability to quickly and efficiently segment keyword groups to generate closer targeting.

Remember, the higher your click-through rate, the better your Quality Scores will likely be, and high Quality Scores are one of the single best predictors of success in PPC.

SEO - Title Optimization

An HTML TITLE tag is put inside the head tag. The page title (not to be confused with the heading for a page) is what is displayed in the title bar of your browser window, and is also what is displayed when you bookmark a page or add it to your browser Favorites.


This is the one place on a webpage where your keywords MUST be present. Correct use of keywords in the title of every page of your website is extremely important to Google - particularly for the homepage. If you do nothing else to optimize your site, remember to do this!

Here are some considerations while designing the title of a webpage:

• The title shouldn't consist of more than about 9 words or 60 characters.
• Use keywords at the very beginning of the title.
• Do not include your company name in the title unless your company name is very well known.

Improper or nonexistent use of titles in webpages keeps more websites out of top rankings on Google than any other factor except perhaps for a lack of relevant content on a page or a lack of quality links from other websites that point to your site.

Best Practices for Creating Titles

Here are some best practices you should follow for creating titles on pages:

Each page should have a unique title.

• If practical, try to include your Primary Keyword Phrase in every title of every page.
• Begin the title of your home page with your Primary Keyword Phrase, followed by your best Secondary Keyword Phrases.
• Use more specific variations to your Primary Keyword Phrase on your specific product, service, or content pages.
• If you must include your company name, put it at the end of the title.
• Use the best form, plural or singular, for your keywords based on what WordTracker says is searched on more often.
• Do not overdo it - do not repeat your keywords more than 2 to 3 times in the title.
• Make sure the <title> tag is the first element in the <head> section of your page - this makes it easier for Google to find the page.