Webdesign - Tip 2

[CyberHippie]

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization

 

When a website is built, it is "looked over" (indexed) by search engines, such as Google.

Search engines look for certain criteria in a website.

Back a few years ago, meta tags where widely used to have a page indexed, but these days it isnt that much of an issue.

 

How a search engine does an index is via a series of complex algorythms that change as people find ways to exploit them

 

If SEO is done wrong, Google can ban a website from showing up on a search, for life.

 

Some of the no-no's are:

• Hidden text via making the text the same color as the background
  
• Link exchange, where links are swapped to create the appearance of outside traffic
  
• Incorrect keywords... If you have a coffee related site and use keywords such as adult sex, porn, sexy girls etc.... that is a good way to get banned
  
• Tags that are irrelevant to what your site is about
  

 

What Google likes to see is content.

The more relative content there is, the more "informative" your site will look.

Links that come direct to your site is also great, as Google looks at your site and knows that because people are linking to it, then it has some value.

 

Content... I need to go back on that for a minute, as this is where your "I can do websites cheap" has some BIG FLAWS

You may have great content, but if it doesnt change, preferably weekly, then if you are Number 1 with Google today, in a month you will be on page 20 or worse.

People who do these cheap websites know this and do fail to tell you that your website will be utterly useless in time. (Unless you update the code/context/FTP it back onto the site on a regular basis). If the websesigner can only code HTML and your site is important to you... then AVOID THEM AT ALL COST !

 

 

Good designers will code a website to give you the ability of simply logging into a special admin page they create for you and give you the ability to update your site online, without the need to know code or how to FTP.

 

Blog software such as wordpress, joomla etc are now slowly being devalued by Google, as they too are being used to spam the internet with useless advertising and users who do this, have software that can update multiple blogs with ease, causing more "untrusted" search links.

 

Personally, I am not a fan of SEO. I tag my images with correct keywords and I try and keep my sites updated with relevant information. Thats it. I rely on my "known user base" to give me quality feedback and support.

 

I strongly believe in website content and new content on a regular basis to be the best form of SEO. (Thats my opinion)

 

There is a lot more to SEO than this, but this is just an overview which can get heated as there are camps of against SEO and camps of DO SEO.

 

However, with ANY professional, there are some SEO experts that are value for money, as they can direct traffic to your site via means that are "safe". I know these guys are like GOLD, but the time and effort to do any valued SEO work is very laborious and time consuming and I just dont have the time to do it. Also watch out for "cowboys" who say they do SEO, but really use "black hat" techniques as these people can destroy your business over time.

 

Let the shouting begin

[bestmate]

Thanks.

[smerc]

Google still likes the structure of wordpress so they can't ban a cms as a whole. There are a lot more web developers moving over towards a cms platform such as wordpress and it's still valuable in googles eyes. I don't think anything can get tarnished in googles eyes except for a site in general, such as web 2.0. If the site has a lot of spam links, for instance WPMU sites (wordpress multi-user / ie: freely edited), these rank very poorly. Link-exchange sites as you said, can hurt also if they are pure spam and offer nothing of value. I have heard good and bad about this. For instance, google has just recently been devaluing sites with affiliate links in them, so I think some of first signs of bought/paid links / affiliate links , are starting to lose value. Then again I think if you are not competing for that many outrageous keywords then the website should be okay.

 

I also add just stick with good/unique content. SEO is good, but if your site has nothing of value, then the users that come to your website wont stay very long. So what's the use. If you see a garage sale with signs on each block of your city and all they sale is old ugly shit, well you are off to a bad start and wasted all that time driving those people to your sale.

 

 

 

Same goes for websites. Now if you are offering a service it is a whole different game. If you come off as professional and a good business, much like other businesses on this website, then you struck gold. Really the only and best way to do this, first is have a good nice website structure. If people get lost and can't find what they are looking for, then they will just leave and probably "never" come back. These same people may see a link to your site later on and think that, "oh his site is probably still a cluster of shit I can't navigate through". As long as they are enticed on clicking a link to your site and can find what they are looking for, you are that much closer to a new customer. Another thing would be the basics, pictures, maps, contact information, business information, and then your services and what you offer. If your site is based around the product/service, then you can also blog or write articles/press releases about business. Maybe you are throwing a party/giveaway/grand opening, well if you are getting people to your website, then write about it. One more reason for them to come to your business.

 

Now I am basically rambling about since most of this will not work for most of the businesses here. Let's face it, you/we have to go to Thailand. Your not going to convince very many people to go to your business all because you are giving away some 50$ discount or just cause you have a grand opening (you are only going to have success targeting new/frequent visitors of Thailand or locals). So a lot of SEO comes into play, the content/blogging has a certain role, but how do tourists/BM's find you? It's easy, they don't, you either find them or you're screwed. I say screwed just meaning, they don't come to your site, not your business is doomed, no no. It's just that more and more people are using the internet, so it's wise to take part in it. Most of the popular forms of SEO for local Thai businesses would be ranking for search terms, forum signature posting, business reviews,and linkbacks from either Thai traveler blogs or a friendly site. Now how did your customers find out about your business? Word of mouth from forums or BM's most likely. You can look at a business and see their name, it only means so much to someone. Now seeing a good review about a business is different, that makes the person curious. The person may have already made up their mind and will visit this business , or they will further their research by going to their website if they have one and base their decision that way. Either way, forums are where it's at in most cases, second would probably be reviews from friendly sites or well established blogs on Thailand.

 

 

Now what SEO is better than the other? On-site SEO really establishes the meaning of your website, you can get visitors simply by throwing up links claiming "thailand boat rental". If your site is clearly not about boat rental, then this could have negative effects or none what-so-ever on your website. This wont kill your website, but why target these type of people? The people who want boat rentals or more information about rentals in Thailand. So you need to drill down who you are targeting within your business and what these type of people type into a search engine (google/yahoo/ask/bing) or what you will be showing in a forum signature or business post on a forum. What service do you offer? Where is your business located?

 

You may offer seafood in Thailand, Bangkok. So best bet here is "Thailand Seafood" - "Bangkok Seafood" - "Thailand Restaurant" - "Bangkok Restaurant", "Bangkok Seafood Restaurant" - "Thailand Seafood Restaurant". Now why use, "Bangkok Restaurant" and not just "Bangkok Seafood Restaurant"? It depends if you want to use both, if you search for "Bangkok Seafood Restaurant" - including the " ". It will bring up nearly 22,000 results for that keyword. "Bangkok Restaurant" shows up with 65,000 results.

 

 

So far "Bangkok Seafood Restaurant" looks easier to rank for since it has less competing pages, but it's up to you if you want to use both. Clearing ranking for "Bangkok Seafood Restaurant" doesn't mean you only serve seafood. You may serve up seafood and bbq. Well then you have to drill down and figure out what it is your business is about, before you link to your website under certain keywords. In this case it's bbq restaurant and seafood restaurant.

 

 

Why use " " when searching a keyword? Because it gives a more general approach on basing who is targeting what and how many pages are under that keyterm. All these pages are not really competitors , some may be. Most are not though, but it's good to get an idea on what to target first. Later on you may target bangkok restaurant, but those people who search for bangkok restaurant , may not be interested in seafood or may even hate it. So it's best to use keywords that represent your business and move on from there to other keywords. Some people use intitle: or allintitle: tags to search other competing pages, but for local business I don't think this has THAT much weight in-my-opinion.

 

 

I wrote too much so far and confused myself on several occasions since I am pretty tired as it is, so I will leave with this. So how do we know which keyword is better than the other? Like I said it's about preference and or a little tool created by google. This tool has been around a while for SEO and is used by a lot of people, however this is nothing to base you're results on 100%. Clearly google isn't perfect and some of the results may be exaggerated by them, we will never know. Know this though, ranking for google is better than yahoo/msn(bing), why? Because most searches come from google, which is 60 or so % of all internet searches. Google has basically paved the way for more relevant content, so people tend to use them more. They are also a household brand known by much more people, familiar with the phrase, "just google it"? They also have a user friendly feel to them, which also brings up local business directories. Not sure how many business searches there are on google, but most likely more than yahoo/bing.

 

 

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

 

 

Just because your particular keyword may not come up with that many or any results, doesn't mean you shouldn't target it. It clearly means that there MAY be people and google is slacking, or that it may not get much searches so google doesn't count it. You never know until you try, like I said earlier a good indicator is searching the keyword in quotes, usually if someone is ranking for a keyword then it may not be totally useless. Either way, if you spend say only 10 minutes a day targeting a certain keyword (which is around 5 hours a month). Say after a month you are #1 for that keyword, well most of your work is done. Now you just monitor googles results and make sure you stay #1 or at least on page 1. Say from those 5 hours a month, you are now getting 30 or so more visitors a month to you're website who are either going to Thailand or are in Thailand, well you could had just scored some new customers. Has it payed off? Well it depends if they become customers, that's up to what you're website offers or if they are truly interested or not. Either way I think someone who knows about your business is better than them not knowing, it's best they know. Even if they are not interested just yet about going to your business, maybe they may know someone who is interested and they could possibly refer them. It's more of a luck game, but it's all in your favor if you take the time to establish your business on the internet.

 

 

Hopefully this sparks some interest for some people, clearly SEO or website optimization is not this easy, but it's not hard either once you understand it.

 

 

Also there may be some spelling mistakes or bad punctuation, I am tired, sorry.

Edited October 16, 2009 by smerc

[smerc]

Another thing I forgot to mention, actually I forgot to mention quite a bit, but the above are just basics along with what cyber pointed out too.

 

Why number 1 rankings instead of just page one? Well it depends, most users I think including myself tend to not go past page 2, since page 2 has less relevant results than page 1. Still why the #1 spot? For those people that don't go past page 1, these same people may not be as click happy as others and could just skim the first couple results that come up under a particular keyword, for instance.

 

This is called a heatmap. Red/orange/yellow being hot spots people often click.

 

 

This picture either says two things, #1 the searchers basically are only interested in the first few results from either organic rankings (SEO/the main listings on the left) or PPC(pay-per-click). #2, this could just be a biased picture all designed to get more business for SEO companies. Either way you look at it, page 1 is crucial, #1-3 spots are even better. Hell someone with a low resolution(800x600) may only see the first few results, depending on how their browser is setup.

 

Pay-per-click is a whole different subject. You pay for each click that comes from googles sponsored listings (main PPC results or adsense). This will range from 10 cents to 5+ dollars. The costs are based on the page you are sending the visitors (landing page) and how relevant you're ads are based on the content from you're website. These all factor into something called a quality score, basically if you are good at copywriting-page design-content creation, then you will be looking at lower costs than someone who doesn't factor this into their PPC campaign (campaign basically meaning keyword groups in you're account). Google bases relevancy from something called an algorithm, they do the same for regular search listings. Basically it spiders (called a googlebot for non-savvy people) content based on what you are promoting and justifies if it is relevant to that keyword. PPC is not complex to learn, but it's complex to actually profit from it. Also in terms of baht, I can not go into detail on how well it would work for local Thai businesses. It does however, get you to the front page for any keyword you wish to target, but at a cost per for each click received. This is not for people with small budgets, unless you of course master the art of getting a low quality score which reduces cost drastically allowing more visitors per cost ratio.

 

Disregard PPC if you don't want to be confused.

Edited October 16, 2009 by smerc

[CyberHippie]

Excellent post smerc. (I was hoping to just keep things simple for newbies, but you blew that one out of the water)..

 

With wordpress, the theory is that because its a great engine to spam the internet, it is being closely monitored by google.

 

One of the next tips I will get around to making would be with analytics, what it is, how it can be useful and how to get it.

 

I dont think much of this information will help bar owners, but for those that make a good living by utilizing the internet, then these little tips can improve their income, unlike bar owners who need to rely on ... jeez.. I have no idea how they would get clients in a bar.

 

Keep up the great comments smerc

[smerc]

Yeah analytics would be a good start and probably one of the first things to do after installing a template/theme. Look forward to the tip cause I am not that familiar with google analytics, just statcounter. I just know the importance and others should take note of it too. A lot of work that goes into a site is shown more by how you track visitors. GA tracks who comes from where (referring sites where your link was placed), keywords used in google, how many visits per day, average page views, time spent on site, and a whole bunch of other things.

 

I really jumped way too far on the above comments, was just trying to cover the basics, but shit got out of control.

[nightlyf]

im from the old school.

 

.com is king.

 

having a generic .com beats anything SEO can do hands down

 

long live the dot com domain name.

[CyberHippie]

nightlyf

Can you explain your post.. maybe I am overlooking something and I dont understand?

 

SEO makes a domain more efficient in indexing and relates to .com or any other domain extension

[LaaMok]

im from the old school.

 

.com is king.

 

having a generic .com beats anything SEO can do hands down

 

long live the dot com domain name.

 

Unfortunately with SEO and internet marketing, the old school get left behind, there is a constant change, luckily for me, people don't stay up to date and it makes my job easier.

 

.com .net and .org have the exact same value. Of course aged domains with aged websites and 5 year registrations, do work wonders, but not as much as some people think.

 

I love seo, its an art and a science and the only way to get ahead is by trial and error. Luckily there are idiots running around chasing only links without the rel nofollow and they think thats going to get them ranking high!

 

People using .co.cc domains need to be shot. And the .info domain is probably the worst around at the moment, google accidently deindexed them all for a few hours, because they are cheap, they are popular for spam sites.

 

I do seo for a living full time, and my latest "no win, no fee" policy has worked wonders.

[nightlyf]

i was reffering to generic domain names

 

cars.com

flowers.com

business.com

sex.com

drugs.com

porn.com

thailand.com

 

seo is forever changing.

 

.com will always be .com

[CyberHippie]

Im sure sex.com is a thriving business... damn.. I wish I had that URL.. hmmm cant see it.. Thai wisdom says the site is not good for me. Im happy to know that the Thai goverment censors stuff like that... I like being dictated too.. *sic*