Yes, Sub folders (Subdirectories) are better! Sub domains are history, according to a recent announcement by Google: They will only permit two sub domains per domain if the content on the sub domain is not above a threshold in uniqueness, independence and index-ability.
I have had the pleasure of flooding the first page of Google, MSN and more recently Bing! Hundreds dozens of times with hundreds of keyword stuffed sub domains before finally getting penalized and delisted for spamming, but it was well worth the quick buck!
Search Engine Spammers are always looking for a way to flick a switch and generate content in such a way that defeats the current spam checking mechanism of the indexing bots in order to get hundreds of thousands of pages indexed. Just such a way “was” dynamically generated sub domains, until the recent past, this technique was used to lay emphasis on the keyword at the very beginning of the page’s URL. I am by no means suggesting that this was all it took, but it sure was one dirty little trick to get ranked higher!
Sub folders or directories on any website have an aura saying “I am a part of this domain; I am a section that holds a lot of information about the topic” Google and Followers have finally realized that sub domains are not nearly as related to the domain as are subfolders (they did realize this, but now they are actually putting their knowledge to practice).
Hopefully, you realize that SEO is not science, but that does not mean that there are no techniques that involved that need to be employed. You should also understand that SEO is done per page basis of a website, the more the pages the more you will have to delve deeper. It is always better to derive common patterns and make use of server side technologies to do most of the work for you. I am assuming you already have a sitemap of your site and in case you don’t, don’t worry just Google up the term Google sitemap generator and you will have your sitemap in no time.
Ok, enough with the chit chat, let’s get down to business. First off let me just walk you through a quick step-by-step guide to reaching the first page on Google (the original key phrase and the site name has been changed due to privacy issues). Please do note that this may not work with all keyword composite phrase but in most cases it is a sure fire.
I am going to keep this really short, sweet, to the point and as summarized as I possibly can.
Onsite SEO Tips, Tricks & Techniques
By Onsite SEO I am referring to what needs to be done on ‘your site’, and by ‘the page’ we will refer to the page that needs to be in the top results of the search engine in question. Forget about using single word keyword, a phrase of two, three or four keywords arranged in a meaningful way is the new standard ‘keyword’.High Page Rank (PR) link
Tip: Find the page with the highest page rank on your website (usually the first page or the homepage but can be a page where you have more relevant content) and place a link of ‘the page’ in the top 1/3 portion of the page.Trick: You can Google for a PR checker and find thousands of websites that do a rank check if you provide them with the page URL, but suppose your site, like most of my client websites are more than a thousand pages, what do you do? Do you have an entire day to waste at the first step? Try this great time saver by ‘BTHOMSON’ (http://pagerank.bthomson.com/ ). Just upload your entire sitemap and you will get the page rank of every single page!
Technique: Search Engines dilute or pass on a factor of the page rank to the links from that page, don’t worry if all your pages have the same PR, or are not ranked yet, just place a link on the first page.
Hierarchy/Position/Name of ‘the page’
Tip: Place ‘the page’ being optimized on the same level (the same directory) as the high PR page and name the page as a slug of your key phrase (Ex: Keyword “Doctors in Dubai” Slug 1 “Doctors-Dubai” Slug2 “DoctorsDubai”), if that is not possible for some odd reason; place it directly underneath this level (subdirectory).Trick: Search Engines do a pretty good job with breaking apart words from slugs. Just in case your keywords when slugged without ‘-‘, either look odd or mean something else as well just Google up the term, if in the “did you mean” you see your phrase that means your slug is ok! Otherwise use dashes between the keywords. Yes, Dashes are better than Underscores.
Technique: It is better if the page is in the root directory because the keyword will appear sooner in the URL. Dashes have always been more often used in file names and in breaking words in normal literature. Search engines recognize this, it is only a very slight advantage but why overlook even the minutest of details.
Page Title
Tip: Page title is like the punch line on an ad! If it does not prompt action or does not convey the message than you can pretty much invent a time machine and travel to the future to see yourself as the last visitor to your page ages ago. The title should be Relevant, Less than 90 characters, Title Case (Proper Case), Action Oriented and Meaningful. The title should be enticing and exciting yet it should not seem like a coffee’s commercial.Trick: Use your strongest keyword first, use words like ‘find, locate, increase, view, uncover, buy etc.” to encourage action, Use Title Case for Titles (that’s what it is for!), don’t exceed 72 characters 65 is optimal including spaces, you might find your listing in the search results (SERP) as “…Buy a Wooden Ass…” instead of “Locate a Local Manufacturer and Buy a Wooden Assembly Doll House”
Technique: Search Engines Use Stemming to find similar words, in order to find out which of your keywords is the strongest, use Google’s traffic estimator tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox ) use Google’s Keyword Relevancy tool to determine the relevancy of a particular set of keywords for the page (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal )
Page Meta Description
Tip: This is the text that (most often) appears right below the title of your listing on the search engine result page (SERP), Make sure it has your main keyword as close to the start as possible, Keep it less than 156 characters. Actionable, to the point, a “voila feel” imparting statement is best. Readable, can be proper case.Trick: Try searching for your competitors and see what they wrote, don’t start copy pasting just yet, it’s not that easy. Look for the common among the top results; you need these words to establish your page as ‘amongst its equals’. 150 characters is the optimal length including spaces. Never have a grammatical mistake in the description Search Engines hate bad grammar! And so do most of us! We just don’t see a professional website as a professional website if it has grammatical or typo errors! Try looking at the “Searches related to” they always come in handy.
Technique: Search Engines either display the page’s text content or the Meta description, never both. They decide on which one to show based on the occurrence of relevant keywords in the description, they highlight parts of the description and title in bold if it matches the users query. If a user finds a bold in the title and in the description, it is really hard for them not to click!
Page Meta Keywords
Tip: 7-9 Keywords/Phrases Maximum. A Composite of 2-4 words, Relevant, Strongest First, Must be used on the page, Preferably Better than competitors, No long descriptions, No stop words included.Trick: Pick a keyword! Search for it, open up the first 10 pages, collect their distinct Meta keywords. Open your page’s textural content, see if your content has those words, if it does not; place them in your content. Pick 7-9 Keywords that are common in your content and the collection.
Technique: Even though most search engines officially do not use this tag to position a page, they never say that they do not use this tag to evaluate the page.
Page Creation Date
Tip: Use the page creation date and last modified date in the Meta as well as imitate a news post by placing a <!—MM/DD/YYY–> between the </head> and <body> tag.Trick: Google and Bing will pick up these posts like news if they crawl or index the page within a short span of this date. Better yet, you can actually dynamically put ‘today’ Date in both these fields as well as the date comment between the head and the body tags.
Technique: Latest and Updated content is what everyone including the search engines prefer! You would not want to see a page created in 2002 that says ‘latest trends in footwear’ or a page with information about the new initiatives and research in a medical field that was created in the last century. If we are not looking to right a historical document, we are all looking for online is what is ‘recent’, ‘latest’ or ‘current’. This is exactly the philosophy that search engines seem to try to satisfy.
Headings
Tip: Use H1 as close to the top of the page as possible, Nest it with one or more H2 and each of those with one or more H3. This will show that your content is very well defined and structured. Use strong keywords in all headings.Trick: If you have a page that does not follow this pattern or if you can’t use this on your layout or you do not have enough content or even if it makes your content look bad; just make a CSS class that resembles normal content text Ex: if you are using Verdana 12px as your default font just make a class with exactly that specification, and set the font-weight to normal, reset the margins and padding as well as the line height and letter spacing. Apply this class to all H1, H2 and H3. Create another class that resets the inherent properties of a <p> ‘paragraph’ tag and renders it very similar to a <span>. Apply it to the <p> elements within your structure. Now for the application:
<H1>Search Engine Optimization</H1>
<p>
Is the process of creating a …
</p>
<p>
In simple words it is…
</p>
<H2> Elements of SEO <H2> are innumerable but…
I think you get the idea…
The above will be rendered as a plain text if you get everything right, which will not take much of your Layouts real-estate and will do the job.
Technique: Presumably a well defined structure to a document dictates that the content is well formed and easier to read with more precisely focused information within each division of the headings hierarchy.
Keyword Garnishing & Emphasis
Tip: Let us assume you already have a page that has approx 250-300 words as content. It should have all the keywords that you are targeting for this page evenly spread out throughout the page (don’t worry if you don’t have one yet, you can make one with this in mind).Trick: Take a screenshot of the page and get a print, highlight the keywords that are already on the page. From a reference list of the keywords that you will be targeting for this page, mark out the ones that are not in your content. Now make simple sentences that follow the flow of your content using these keywords and place them where you see less of a cluster in your highlights.
Technique: Keyword density is one of the most important factors of getting a page ranked and listed higher in SERP. Simply put, Higher the density of targeted keywords, higher the potential rank for that particular area of your virtual real-estate. Mostly when we start to write content we have all aspects of the quality and SEO in mind but as soon as we go past the 100 words barrier we tend to loosen up on the technical aspects and we start focusing on the communicational aspects, this is alright as long as you don’t want anyone to read what you write but from Search Engines Optimization point of view, you definitely need to give it a technical revision over and over again. While evaluating content, a page that has the searchers desired keyword and/or related keywords spread over the entire document will have more weightage then a page that has or talks about the search term just in the beginning or just at the end or just in the middle.
Anchor Text
Tip: Hyperlink the evenly spread out keywords as Anchor text in your content to other areas of your site with similar content or internal FAQ or dictionary references.Trick: You can either do a manual linking for each keyword or you can dynamically link all the keywords in your content to do a ‘search’ on your site. It will show relevant results keep the flow of the website and encourage page views. A word of caution: Do not and I repeat do not bombard your user with popup boxes, or fancy sliders and do not use JavaScript to perform the linking on the clients side, and limit the number of links from the page to less than 90 overall.
Technique: The web is a super-interconnected content library, bots and people alike love to surf and bounce around. This is only possible with the use of hyperlinks (one form or the other). Most people start from a search engine and after a short trip end up at the same one. The objective is to create a page that entices the users to delve deeper virtually lengthening their journey between the inevitable end points, that is the philosophy for most social networks (if you consider them to be closed systems in isolation) Anchor text is relevant in exactly this sense, it relates pages with a relevant context.
Alternate Text and Link Titles
Tip: ‘ALT’ attribute is almost obsolete in relative terms for modern browsers, ‘ALT’ is a must for images and ‘TITLE’ is a must for images as well as links. Use keywords close to the links or images in these tags.Trick: If you are displaying the information about your product don’t just put ‘buy now’ in the title of your image or link proceeding to the buy page, you are wasting an opportunity to plant a keyword. Instead place an actionable keyword before, between or after the ‘buy now’ tip. Ex: If you are selling an e-book try using ‘Advanced SEO Tips – Buy Now’ as the Title and the ‘ALT’ the dual purpose text will allow for better understanding when images are turned off as well as give your page higher (virtual) keyword density.
Technique: Have you ever seen images showing up in the first few lines of something that you searched for on Google, This is exactly what they index to accomplish it. If your tip matches what the user is searching for it will be evaluated, both your page and the image will be rewarded for it.
Lists
Tip: Using unordered lists or ordered lists are very similar to using nested headings, as their purpose is to present to the point structured information to the user. Use lists roughly half way in your content, every point with one or two keywords. Do not finish your content off with a list; try to have at least a couple of lines as a conclusion to your list.Trick: A table of contents is a list, or if the content has ‘tags’ associated you can display them using lists. You need to remember that lists can be virtually displayed in any way you want them to; they can be set to be rendered as plain text if that is what is required.
Technique: A list is most often used to pre-seed a users mind with concise information that they user will look forward to, or to provide point-to-point briefs of the subject. Search Engines use lists to determine establish relevancy of the content in the context of the list as well as the entire page.
Address Field Trick
Tip: Using the address field shows the ownership of the document to the Address in the field. You can establish a stronger reference to your company’s name by using this field (or to any other company for that matter).Trick: Your content is about a company’s product usage tutorial, just use the address field to articulate the content to the ownership of that company. Need I say more? It’s not a major boost and is neglected more than it should be, but is worth the effort.
Technique: Address fields are not authentication by any means, but using this field does propose a stronger reference to the company relevant to the subject, besides that you have an additional place to place your keywords.
External References
Tip: Strong external references mean the world of a difference to a page, if you can establish references or links coming in from PR4+ websites, your page will be rewarded generously. Please note that link farms are not good sources of page repute.Trick: Good quality content and lots of man hours submitting your article or product reference to the right places, there is no shortcut for quality references but you can improve the odds of getting a good external link by posting articles or their references directly in paid directories like YAHOO or human edited directories like DMOZ and online Article Sites and Wiki’s.
Technique: The PR system intentionally delegates the page rank of one page to all pages linked from it. Consider it like a high class shopping district, everyone affiliated will automatically get ‘some’ good repute.
Internal References
Tip: Use internal links wisely, pages that link to low PR pages on your website tend to dilute their own relevance.Trick: Internal links to the strongest (PR Wise) pages on the website will establish a firm nesting for the page. If you’re pages are of low PR, minimize internal links. If they are of High PR establish dense interweaving.
Technique: PR dilution and delegation occurs much the same way for internal links as it does for external links. Strong references are rewarded by the Search Engines and weak references are fatal.
URL Rewriting
Tip: Use short understandable, keyword rich, Emphasize minimal Query String usage (visible), well structured and slugged URL’s.Trick: Query Strings and poorly nested or structured pages within directories, folders or applications is one of the biggest disasters, it cripples and hinders a Search Engines ability to index your website and the potential pages within. Use keywords and imitate a filename instead of a parameter. Use MODREWRITE or URLREWRITING modules, controls and filters to your advantage, A Structure like http://doctor-dubai.com/directory/hospitals/Zulekha-Hospital.aspx is stronger than http://doctor-dubai.com/directory.aspx?category=hospitals&name=Zulekha-Hospital
Technique: Subdirectories and folders indicate structure and hierarchical, Search Engines love a well defined hierarchy, a definite structure and URL’s without the infamous ‘?’ question mark.
JavaScript, Flash & Misc Irritators
Tip: Do not load content that needs to be indexed by using Client Side Scripts, From an SEO’s point of view that is just murdering your page. Do not use Flash for text that can be displayed otherwise. Never use text in images if by any means you can do otherwise.Trick: Put the text where it belongs, in your content. Images are for, well, images. Use overlapping DIV’s to place text on Image backgrounds, Load content text from the server side, not the client side. You can use absolutely place DIV over flash as well.
Technique: Even though efforts are being made to index text in images by search engines, it is hard for them to do so and is a long way off the front line. Efforts have been made in indexing AJAX enabled content but since the technology lacks standardization, it is really difficult for the search engines to establish the flow of data and its rightful position in the hierarchy of DOM. Adobe is helping Google and other Search Engines establish a firm indexing system for Flash content but it is still an initiative that requires a lot of time to be anywhere nearly as index able and searchable as plain old text.
Duplicate Title & Description Fix
Tip: Never have Duplicate Titles or Descriptions let alone content. Use page numbers and misc parameters to your advantage.Trick: Most websites with search results pages will get higher listings in the Search Engines Results Pages if they use searched terms, page numbers and misc parameters to the results page in the title and the description of the page. This is a sure fire way of reducing if not eliminating duplicate titles and descriptions. Imagine how you would perceive two pages with the same title ‘Medical Survey’. Is the title meaningful? Yes! But does it tell you what it actually is? Use keywords in the title to differentiate pages. If there is no possibility of avoiding duplicate phrases, put in page numbers and misc parameters.
Technique: Pages that do not provide a meaningful context in the title to the proceedings are as ambiguous to the Search Engines as they are to the users.
Offsite SEO Tips, Tricks & Techniques
Links
Tip: Use well structured links on the right and relevant pages to refer to your page. A well formed link is like an ad and it costs you nothing.Trick: Use Strong keywords and preferably parts of your pages title in the links from external sites, use titles if they allow you to. Links from “NOFOLLOW” website only mean little to the search engines. Try gathering links from websites that do not have such relations defined for external links. Do not use Query String parameters in your links; making use of URL Re-righting can help you do this.
Technique: PR dilution does not occur if a “rel=nofollow” tag is emphasized for external or internal links. Search Engines use such measures to allow the webmaster to take some degree of control over who gets to benefit from their websites rank.
Anchor Text
Tip: Choose a keyword for your external link that is weighed highly by the referring page and is preferable weighed strongly on your page as well. Make the anchor text ‘Actionable’. Don’t sound like a freebie, don’t advertise yourself. Make your contribution valuable.Trick: Try using action oriented words (verbs) like ‘Find, View etc. If the page that is going to refer to your page is about ‘hazards of smoking’ then your page should be relevant to the context and your anchor text should be something like ‘View Hoax Medical College Research – Tobacco usage and Teen Smoking’
Technique: Anchor text is the first impression of your page to a particular instance of the Search Engine’s bot. It will evaluate your page based on this context.
Link Proximity to Keywords
Tip: Place your link near strong keywords for your page. If your link is to an article about Search Engine Optimization VS Optimizing User Experience then the preceding and follow up text should use keywords related to the topic.Trick: Make use of sentences that you make from a list of keywords for your page. These will establish and increased relevance of your link to your content.
Technique: Keyword proximity is used by Search Engines to establish SPAM VS TRUE CONTENT. In early days, when such filters were not used a spammer could potentially use pretty much “ “ a blank space to create a link with gibberish text all around from a number of sources.
Social Bookmarks
Tip: The world is going social and this is your opportunity to access more parts of the world than ever before. Get on twitter, start tweeting about your product, Make a Facebook Fan page even if you are the only fan, start social bookmarking. Delicious, Digg and Stumbleupon are a good place to start.Trick: Creating Fan Page and a Twitter blog are just the start, if you really want to run with it; ask all your friends to become a fan, ask everyone you know to socially bookmark it and place easily accessible bookmark links on your pages as well. Try focusing on one page at a time bookmark it everywhere and then move to the next one.
Technique: Social bookmarks are one strong PR links that not only send visitors to your site, but send strong reference to your pages as well. The more links you have the more you increase your PR.
Free Press Release
Tip: Submit a Free Press Release about latest Company, Event, Product developments regularly. By Regularly I mean even weekly.Trick: Create a template for your Press Release and Schedule a weekly press release about anything that needs to be shared or is relevant to content on your page, create specially crafted landing pages to welcome the referred visitors. Press Releases are not only an advertising medium they are a source of free traffic as well has a few qualified links each. If someone big notices your release, you will be off to head start.
Technique: Hiring a professionals help is never a bad thing, but if you are looking into writing yourself than I suggest you do read the guidelines and tutorials on writing a press release. Imagine if your press release can make it onto Google or similar companies News! You get a permanent link from a highly respected website and all the exposure that you have been working so hard for.
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