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SEO Basics in 45 Minutes
By Kalena Jordan (c) 2008

As most people who read this newsletter will know, Jill Whalen
is a pioneer in search engine optimization. Nicknamed the First
Lady of Search, Jill founded the site HighRankings.com
(http://www.highrankings.com/) in 1995. Today High Rankings has
grown to be one of the pre-eminent SEO companies in the US.
Jill's company is dedicated to educating its clients and sharing
its knowledge with the industry at large through the High
Rankings Advisor newsletter, the High Rankings Forum and her
in-house seminars.

In her presentation for Webstock 2008
(http://www.webstock.org.nz/), Jill gave the audience a 45
minute tutorial in SEO Basics. First up, Jill discussed what
SEO isn't. Some of the most common SEO myths she exposed
included:

PPC Myths:

- PPC ads will help organic rankings
- PPC ads will hurt organic rankings

Tag Myths:

- you must have a keyword-rich domain
- you must have keyword-rich page URLs
- heading tags are necessary (H1, H2 etc.)
- you need to use keywords in meta keyword tags, in particular
  you need to use keywords that are included in your page
  content.
  Jill says that it's actually better to use the keyword tag to
  include misspellings and other keyword varieties that you
  don't have in your pages.
- using keywords in comment tags will hurt your rankings.

Content Myths:

- page copy must be a certain # of words. Jill actually made up
  the 250 word limit a few years ago and it's stuck, but there
  is really no set limit to please search engines.
- that you need to bold/italicize your target keywords.
- that you must use a specific keyword density. Jill says that
  keyword density tools are ridiculous.
- that you must optimize a page for a single keyword or phrase
  per page. Instead, try to optimize each page for 3-5 phrases
  that are related, so that your copy reads better than repeating
  one phrase over and over.
- that you need to optimize for the long-tail searches. You
  don't generally need to optimize for these - engines will find
  them on their own.
- duplicate content will get your site penalized. There is not a
  penalty as such, but engines will filter out duplicates in lieu
  of the original copy (or what they think is the original).

Design Myths:

 - your HTML code must validate to W3C. Not even Google.com
   validates!
 - your navigation must be text links not images. Surprisingly,
   graphical navigation is fine as long as you use ALT tags.
 - you can't use Flash. It's fine to use Flash, as long as it
   is one element of your page, not a complete Flash site. Use a
   text-based site too if using a Flash site.
 - certain design techniques are black hat. Javascript code is
   legitimate, not just used by black hats.

Link Building Myths:

- that Google's link: command is accurate. It's not a useful
  tool. Use Google Webmaster Tools or the Yahoo link command
  instead.
- that reciprocal links won't count. From the right site,
  reciprocal links are fine, even very helpful.
- that pages are ranked in PageRank order in the search results.
  They're not. Google Toolbar PageRank is not accurate anyway so
  ignore it.
- you must be in DMOZ or Yahoo Directory to get good Google
  rankings. In Jill’s opinion, the Yahoo Directory is not worth
  the money these days.

Submitting, Crawling and Indexing Myths:

- that you need to submit URLs to engines. Provided you have a
  link to your site, you will be found and indexed.
- that you need a Google Sitemap. Not needed for the average
  site. It won't change your site rank.
- that you need to update your site frequently.
- frequent spidering helps rankings. Not true.
- that you need multiple sites. This won't help in the engines
  and creates more maintenance work.
- that you need doorway pages. Jill says this is so 1995!

SEO Company Myths:

- that a #1 ranking will always lead to more traffic or sales.
  The good rankings need to be for keywords and phrases that
  people are actually searching for.
- that the company can place pages in certain positions. Not
  possible, unless they’re using Pay Per Click or sponsored
  spots.
- that your rankings will tank if you stop paying the company.
  Rubbish!
- that they have a "proprietary method" of SEO. They’re
  lying!
- that they have a "special relationship" with Google. Again,
  they're lying. Google has no relationships with organic SEO
  companies that Jill is aware of.
- that they can increase your rankings without doing any on-page
  work. Run away!

Next, Jill defined what SEO is. Her definition of SEO is
"making your site the best it can be for your site visitors AND
the search engines". She made the point that search engines
need to:

- Find
- Crawl
- Index
- Determine relevancy
- show results

So you should keep these top of mind when designing and SEOing
your site.

Jill also made the point that search engines don't know you. So
you should disclose what you sell and who you are in plain
language that naturally incorporates the keyword phrases. Dumb
down your pages for users. What search engines want is good
content. If you're not getting good traffic from your pages,
they're broken, she says. In a nutshell, make sure your pages
speak to your target audience and solve their problems.

Jill then discussed how to choose keywords to target on your
site. She recommended brainstorming with friends, family and
business colleagues and creating a seed list of keywords. Then
take that list and run it through keyword research tools such as
WordTracker (http://www.wordtracker.com/) or Keyword Discovery
(http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/) and even Google AdWords
(http://adwords.google.com/) to determine the best keywords and
phrases to target.

Jill says there are three types of keyword phrases:

1) General and highly competitive terms - not good choices.
2) Long tail - uncompetitive terms - generally no need to SEO
   for.
3) Relevant and specific terms, which are the best to choose
   because they highly searched, yet are targeted enough to
   bring qualified traffic.

Next, Jill explained where to put your keywords. She recommended
putting them in:

- anchor text
- clickable image alt attributes (alt tags)
- headlines
- body text copy
- title tags (Don't make your titles less than 10 words, she
  says.)
- meta description tags


Jill finished up by teaching the group how to measure SEO
success. She said that high rankings are not the best measure of
success because you might be ranking for phrases nobody is
searching on. Instead you should be looking for increased
targeted traffic to your site and more conversions. Use your web
stats to give you the clues as to whether your site and your SEO
is working.

As for the future of SEO, well despite the rumors that SEO is
dead, Jill doesn't think that the big engines will switch to
exclusively paid listings any time soon. In her opinion, there
will always be some free ways to get listed so there will always
be a need for SEO. In the same vein, a crawler-friendly site
will always get good results and off page criteria (e.g. links)
will always be important.
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Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine
optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and
respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as
running a daily Search Engine Advice Column
(http://www.searchenginecollege.com/blog.htm), Kalena manages
Search Engine College (http://www.searchenginecollege.com/)- an
online training institution offering instructor-led short courses
and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization
and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.
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