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How to Optimize for Google: Part 1 of 3
By Scott Van Achte (c) 2008

In today's online world search engine rankings can make your
business succeed, and while rankings in Yahoo and MSN are very
valuable, their combined market value is still less than that
of Google. This makes achieving top rankings in Google that
much more important.

In this three-part series on How to Optimize for Google we will
touch on a number of important aspects for top Google rankings
including website optimization, links, Google Webmaster tools,
and a number of other considerations.

The focus of Part 1 will be with on page website optimization.

THE RIGHT KEYWORDS
This article is not about keyword research so I will not spend
too much time on this topic, however, I felt it was important to
at least brush on this slightly. If you are interested in
reading more, please see Keyword Research for Organic SEO
(http://news.stepforth.com/blog/2007/07/keyword-research-for-organic-seo.php).

Make sure that your targets are achievable. If you select the
wrong keywords, it can make your entire optimization experience
essentially a waste. Choose keywords that are attainable but yet
still offer a reasonable search frequency for your industry.
Your phrase selection should also be targeted to bring qualified
traffic to your site.

Using the hotel industry as an example, targeting the word
"hotel" would make very little sense but by narrowing it down
to "Victoria BC hotel" you now have less competition, and a
more qualified audience. Keep your targets in perspective and go
after the obtainable rankings.


WEBSITE OPTIMIZATION
There are many on-site factors that play a role in your search
engine rankings. Here are a number of those factors and what you
can do to increase your chances of success.

Title Tag
The title tag plays one of the most important roles in search
results at Google, and is almost always the heading Google
chooses for each of its listings. Placement of your target
phrase is best used near the start of the tag and repeated again
in the middle or near the end. Three uses of your target phrase
may be helpful in some instances, as long as it is not too
overwhelming. For best results each page on your site should
have a totally unique title tag.

It is also important to remember that because Google will use
this title as the main heading for your listing, you will want
to keep it attractive to potential searchers. Try to also add a
call to action, or other wording to help make your listing
appear attractive to searchers.

To help illustrate the fact Google takes this tag into
consideration, simply do a search for your target phrase and
take a look at the titles of the top 10. I tried a search for a
rather broad term "hotel" and saw that all 10/10 listings had
it in the title tag, and 6/10 had it as the very first word. A
quick scan showed that the entire top 30 either had the word
hotel, or hotels in their title tags.

If you do only one thing to your website, make sure that all
your title tags are relevant, unique, and contain your target
phrase for each page.

Meta Description Tag
The Meta Description tag is still occasionally used by Google as
the description which appears in the search results themselves.
While this used to be a more common practice Google tends to use
it most often on sites with very limited content, or those which
are flash based. I have seen it still used for content rich
sites, however this is less common.

The Meta Description tag still has an impact on search rankings.
Your best bet when using this tag is to keep it short and sweet
with your target phrase close to the start and never repeated
more than 3 times. Like the title tag, each page on your site
should have its own unique description tag.

Meta Keyword Tag
When it comes to Google this tag is useless, and won't
influence your rankings. There is some speculation as to whether
a spammy keyword tag can however, have a negative effect on
Google rankings. As a result, if you do utilize a keyword Meta
tag for the smaller engines, it is best to keep it clean and
play it safe.

Density
Keyword density plays a role in overall rankings; however, it is
not as cut and dry as it once was. Once upon a time there was a
magic number that when used could almost guarantee top
rankings.

This is no longer the case. Today the ideal density varies from
industry to industry, phrase to phrase. To find out what density
you should aim for, take the top 10 or 20 search results and see
what percentage those sites are using. In most cases you will
find that the majority of these sites have a very similar
density to one another, and this average density is a good
estimation of what you should aim for.

Body Text and Keyword Placement
The location of relevant text on your site will help establish
the overall importance of your target phrase. While you do not
want to overwhelm the engines and site visitors with a
bombardment of target phrases at the top of the page, try to
sprinkle in some instances as close to the top of the page as
possible.

Synonyms
Be sure to include various synonyms for your target phrases
within your body text on your site. Google will use these
synonyms to tie in the overall relevance of the page for your
main target phrases, which in turn can improve your odds.

To find possible synonyms you can use a thesaurus, but the best
way is to search Google itself and see exactly what they
consider to be similar. Simply search in Google for your target
phrase preceded with a tilde, such as "~hotels". Next scan
through the search results for any text Google has bolded. These
are all words that Google considers to be related. Using the
"~hotels" example Google brings up phrases such as 'travel',
'tourism', 'accommodation', as well as various hotel chain
names such as 'Hilton Hotels'.

Keywords in Domain
There is still some speculation if having a target phrase as
part of your top level domain (TLD) is of use to search
rankings. From my experience, yes, there is value here,
although, nothing like it was several years ago.

If you are starting off in the online world and are
contemplating which domain to go for, consider one that uses
your target phrase, assuming that it is both relevant to your
business name, and uses no more than a single hyphen. While
multiple hyphens in a domain can be successful, they are very
common with highly spammy websites, so it is best to not take
that route if possible.

While having a keyword located within your domain can offer some
ranking juice, I would not suggest heading out and doing a
domain swap. In most cases you would be better off working on
your existing site than starting from scratch with a new
domain.

Keywords in page specific URL
Using keywords for specific page URL's can also help add a
little bit of value to your site, providing you use them
responsibly. Consider using a keyword as a directory name and as
part of a file name where it naturally makes sense to do so. If
you have a website that focuses on tourism and includes local
hotel listings, you may want to consider the following structure
for your page on the Hilton:

MyTourismSite.com/Victoria/Accommodations/Hotels/Hilton.html

Heading Tags
Placement of target phrases within heading tags helps to
establish the importance of those given phrases. That said do
not over do it, or abuse it. Only place target phrases within a
heading tag if it makes sense to do so, and don't flood a page
with numerous tags. Heading tags are not as critical as they
once were, but still a good contribution to a well optimized
page.

Link Anchor text
This is the actual text you click on as part of a link. When
full or partial target phrases are used within your text links
they help pass on some value to the linked page for those
phrases. This is also true when considering surrounding text.
When the content around the link is also relevant, the link
holds slightly more value.

While a link that simply states "click here" or
"www.domainname.com" does have its place, they provide
considerably less value than a link that would use "discount
hotels" as its anchor.

Image Alt Text
While image alt text still plays a minor role, its biggest part
is within the use of image based navigation. If you have an
image linked to another page, the alt text will be attributed
much the same way as standard link anchor text is.

Image Alt text should always be short and to the point and
should accurately describe either the image itself, or the page
the image is linking to. Do not use alt tags as a place to stuff
keywords.

Inline Links
These are links that are found mid sentence or mid paragraph as
opposed to a simple listing of links as found in a menu or
possibly on a sitemap. Links found mid paragraph tend to pass on
a little more value from the surrounding text and can offer more
relevance to the linked page.

Site Navigation
It is absolutely imperative that your website be fully
spiderable by the search engines. This may seem obvious, but
often webmasters overlook Google's ability to crawl a website.
Google has become very advanced in what links it can follow and
how it can spider a website, but there are still some things
that can cause significant roadblocks.

- Flash: One of the most commonly made mistakes is the use of
flash. If flash is used as a sole means of site navigation then
you can count on Google not viewing your internal pages, and
having a significant disadvantage in terms of site rankings.

- Java Script / DHTML: These days most Java Script and even
DHTML menus can be spidered by Google, however, this is not
always the case. If your site utilizes any kind of fancy
navigation and you are wondering why Google has not indexed your
internal pages, check out Google's Cached Text version of your
page. If you do not see any text links, then your navigation may
be invisible to Google.

- Images: Image based navigation has been safe for many years
now, but if your site uses this form of navigation it is
essential to have brief, relevant alt text on all your buttons.
This alt text will act much like standard anchor text for text
based links. This is not only for the purpose of search ranking
value, but take a look at Google's cached text version of your
page. If you have image based links that do not have alt text,
those links do not appear. This doesn't mean Google won't
follow them, but for anyone viewing your site on a text based
browser, your links will be invisible to them.

URL Structure
Avoid long elaborate URL's with extraneous characters. While
Google has reached a point where they can index massive URL
strings, it is best to avoid them if at all possible. For
dynamic sites consider utilizing mod rewrites to significantly
clean up the URL to not only make it more search engine
friendly, but more user friendly as well.

MyTourismSite.com/?locid="victoria"&catid=
"accommodations"&type="hotel"&comp="hilton"

stands a better chance if cleaned up to read:

MyTourismSite.com/victoria/accommodations/hotels/hilton.htm

SUMMARY
Basic website optimization is a critical component for
successful placement in Google but is only part of the overall
picture. Stay tuned for "How to Optimize for Google - Part 2 of
3" where we will discuss Links and Google Webmaster Tools.
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Scott Van Achte is the Senior SEO at StepForth Web Marketing Inc.,
based in Victoria, BC, Canada and founded in 1997. You can read
more of Scott's articles and those of the StepForth team at
http://news.stepforth.com or contact us at http://www.stepforth.com/,
Tel - 250-385-1190, Toll Free - 877-385-5526, Fax - 250-385-1198
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