Optimizing Your Site for Search Engines

Search engine optimization is a lot like trying to catch the steam that you
breathe on a cold winter day. You can see it. You know it exists, but there’s
no way to actually contain and quantify the steam. You can see the results
of SEO and you can figure out how best to achieve it, but it’s still possible to
do everything right and not achieve the ultimate goal — landing the very first
listing on a search engine results page, or SERP.
Good news though, you don’t necessarily want to be the very top listing on a
SERP. Think about this — how often do you click the first search result and
not go any farther? Even if you find exactly what you’re looking for on the
first page you jump to, you still click through some of the other results just
to make sure the first page isn’t lying to you.
As a general rule, I go through the listings of about ten results pages, just to
make sure I’m getting the best info. Admittedly, I may be a little more patient
than your average searcher. Most people don’t go much deeper than the
second page of results. Because you should probably be targeting your Web
site to normal folks rather than obsessive-compulsive types like me, you want
your Web site to fall somewhere on the first or second page of results. If it
does, you’re fine — you can count your search marketing efforts a success,
even if your site isn’t at the very tippy-top of the first SERP.
Achieving that first- or second-page placement isn’t a sure thing — it requires
a little effort on your part. You can take a number of steps to ensure a better
search engine ranking — steps I get to in a bit — but the most important
piece in your SEO puzzle involves the keywords on which your Web site is
based. You do have keywords, right? If not, you need them. However, not just
any keyword will do, which the next section makes clear.

A Keyword By Any Other Name

It doesn’t matter what you call it, a keyword will always be . . . well, a key
word or phrase around which your Web site content is centralized. A single
word is sometimes not enough to narrow the possibilities for a Web site,
which is why some keywords are actually keyword phrases or keyphrases. It’s
the same concept — a centralized theme — just using more than one word. I
use the term keyword generically to mean both keywords and keyphrases.
Web crawlers are programs that travel around the Internet examining and categorizing
Web pages by keyword. That’s how search engines, like Google, know to
return your Web site when someone searches for a specific keyword or phrase.
The crawler has already had a look-see and has placed your Web page into a
category along with all the other sites on the Web that fit into that category.
Keyword marketing, then, is using that keyword or phrase to market your Web
site. Advertisements for a Web site, product, or service are designed using the
keyword or keyphrase as the “foundation” for the ads. Then, when Internet
users search for that keyword, the ads are displayed in the search results.
Google then takes this process one step further by placing ads on Web pages
that are built around — or optimized for — that keyword. So, whoever said a
picture is worth a thousand words didn’t realize the Internet would come along
and reduce that value to just one or two — three at the most.

Understanding Keyword Marketing

Before finding out how keywords work, you first need a quick overview of how
Web sites are cataloged and then returned as search results. The way things
go, you first put up a Web site. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy — maybe
it’s your personal blog about your busybody Aunt Louise and how crazy she
makes you, or it could be a serious site about how frogs hibernate in the muck
at the bottom of ponds during winter. The topic of your Web site doesn’t
matter, but you have to get it on the Internet.
After you put up a Web site, a search crawler — a specialized software program
that examines Web sites and categorizes them by keyword — finds your Web
site. Search crawlers are designed to crawl every Web site within parameters
that are outlined by the search crawler’s designer. A designer could order a
search crawler to, say, examine Web sites contained on a list drawn by the
designer.
The crawler’s first stop is the first Web page of the first Web site on the
designer’s list. The crawler reads through the pages of the Web site, looking
at each word on the site.
Crawlers also look at what words are used together. For example, cosmetic
makeup is different from exam makeup, but the crawler knows that makeup
is used in two completely different ways because it looks at the words surrounding
it.
While the crawler makes its way through a site, it records the number of times a
keyword, a keyphrase, or a set of keywords is used on the site. If exam makeup is
used in the title and then three times in a 300-word section of text, it’s probably
a good bet that the Web site being crawled is about makeup exams. Of course,
the search engine crawler isn’t betting on anything. The crawler’s like the skeptic
who doesn’t count on anything that’s not immediately visible and physically
touchable. Exam makeup may be there, but it needs proof!
The crawler uses a very lengthy and complicated algorithm as its search
formula. The algorithm compares the number of times a keyword is used to
indicators that tell it if that keyword is important on the Web site. Like color
coding, that algorithm makes it possible to define a Web site in terms of how
it relates to a specific topic.
Algorithms in general are computer programs that systematically solve problems
such as determining how many times a keyword is used on a Web site.
They’re complicated creatures, highly technical in nature, and they are a
search engine’s lifeblood — which is why they’re so jealously guarded. Just
try to pry Google’s secret algorithm from their tightly clenched fist and see
where that gets you.
The crawler takes a stab at what your Web site’s all about by registering the
site’s keywords. The crawler then takes another look at the site, this time
considering those keywords in the context of the Web site — not just the keywords
but also things like keyword placement (where on the site the words
appear), the alternative text you put in for graphics (the stuff that shows up
if the graphic won’t load), and the links into and out of the Web site.
After looking at all these elements and many others (some search engines
use over 100 different considerations), the crawler makes a determination
about where in the great scheme of things a particular Web site belongs.
That information is then stored in a database the size of Manhattan.
Okay, it’s not really the size of Manhattan, but it’s huge. Way larger than any
database you’ve ever encountered before.
After the Web site’s cataloged, it can be pushed to visitors that do a search
based on keywords related to the main keyword of the Web page. That’s
another algorithm altogether. That algorithm cross-references the search
that a user makes with the data stored in the database to determine which
sites — of the billions of cataloged sites — are the best fit for the keyword
or phrase that the searcher used.
In other words, your Web site basically boils down to the keywords on which
it’s built. To rank successfully in any search engine, you not only need the
right keywords but you also need keywords that are closely associated with
the topic of your Web site. Those keywords also need to be at the right
places on your Web site. If they’re not, the search crawler won’t feel completely
confident about which particular section of the database is the proper
home for your site — so the site might be put lower in the rankings behind
many other (perhaps far less relevant) sites
Choosing the right keywords
Choosing the right keywords is a bit of a science — but it’s also a bit of oldfashioned
luck. No keyword guide is out there for the perplexed that can
tell you whether the keyword is perfect for this or that subject. Instead, the
words that apply to your subject are what they are. So, the best place to start
looking for the right keywords for your topic is to brainstorm all the words
that are most prevalent when the topic is in discussion.
Use search engine optimization (SEO) as an example. In any conversation you
ever have about SEO, you’ll hear the term keyword come up time and again.
Keyword is clearly one of the top keywords for SEO — come on, SEO is built
around keyword marketing!
Okay, that was the easy part. Getting the number-one keyword down is like
shooting fish in a barrel, but you can’t stop there. You need a larger pool of
keywords to get you started. If you keep brainstorming additional words,
you’ll probably come up with the following keywords:
Search engine
Search
Marketing
List
Link
Linking strategy
Alt tags
Metatags
Metadata
Media
Content
Social media
That’s just the short list. If you really put some time into brainstorming the
SEO topic, you could come up with a couple hundred words. And don’t forget
phrases, too — up to three words. They’re more useful and help you target
better than just single words.
You’ll find hundreds of words for your own Web site topic, too. Sit down with
a pen and a piece of paper and think through your topic. Write down all the
words that come to mind as you consider each aspect of your business. Don’t
worry about compartmentalizing the words, just get them on paper. When
you’re done, cover up the page and walk away for half a day or so.
Walking away gives the list time to rest. Take the time away from the list to do
something completely unassociated with determining keywords. During that
time, try to keep your mind off the list so that when you come back to it, you
can look at it with fresh eyes.
When you do return to the list, read through it slowly and take the time to consider
each word while you read it. Ask if a particular word is really a term that
a searcher would use to find your Web site or a page on your site. If the answer
is a resounding “No,” cross the word off the list. When you’re done, you should
have a reasonably sized list from which to choose that magic number of words.
So, what’s the magic number? Who knows? Just use exactly the number of
words you need (to market your site properly) and not one more. Here are
some general rules you should follow:
Start with a list of 50–100 keywords. You won’t use all the keywords,
but the list gives you a good point from which to narrow the words that
are most likely used to find your Web site.
Don’t use more than three words on a single page. Also, only use three
words if they’re all contained within a phrase. It’s better to use one word
or phrase per page on your Web site, but each page can have a different
word or phrase.
Avoid words that are overused. Overused words are obvious search
terms, but they’re also the most competitive terms and can cost a fortune
if you’re targeting them for advertisements. No kidding. It’s not unheard of
for some words to cost as much as $50 per click to advertisers who want
their ads prominently displayed if someone searches for that keyword.
Advertisers would have to have an endless budget to market with these
words. On the other side of that equation is AdSense — which arranges to
display those superexpensive ads on Web sites like your own — and yes,
those words pay really well, but the competition for sites to place those
ads on is also very tough. Best to stick with something that will get you a
regular listing of some great ads that will truly interest your visitors.
Try to think like site visitors think. What keywords represent your
visitors’ interests? One way to keep up with this information is to use a
Web site analytics program, such as Google Analytics (www.google.
com/analytics). An analytics program tracks visitors to your site, such
as where they came to your site from and what keywords they used to
find your site on search engines, along with many other statistics. If you
don’t have a Web site analytics program, get one. Right now.
After you narrow down your keyword list, put in the hard work — research
the words on the list. Researching keywords isn’t difficult, but it can be
time-consuming. That’s one of the reasons you don’t want to start the process
with a list of 500 potential keywords. You’d never have enough time to
research them all. It’s also unwise to use too many keywords on your Web
site because it makes it hard for crawlers to properly classify your site — a
problem that could leave you without well-targeted AdSense ads.
The first step in researching keywords is to select the top 20 or so words or
phrases that most accurately reflect your Web site. Then, with that list, start
searching for each word or phrase on the list.
Look through the first couple results pages for matches to your site. Do the
pages returned by your search engine reflect the content of your site in any
way? If not, how do the sites that do get returned differ from yours? Are they
structured differently, for example? If you examine your results critically, you
can find clues that help you decide how well the word or phrase you selected
will actually result in traffic to your site.
The next step is to look at statistics, such as the amount of competition and
the cost of advertisements for the keyword or phrase. Keyword research
tools like the Google AdWords Keyword Tool (https://adwords.google.
com/select/KeywordToolExternal) and the Yahoo! Search Marketing
Keyword Tool (http://pixelfast.com/overture can help here). You
must have a Yahoo! Search Marketing account to use the Yahoo! tool, and
while I write this, Yahoo! Search Marketing is still under construction, but
should be up and running soon.
The Google AdWords Keyword Tool performs two functions: It allows you to see
what other keywords you might be missing when putting together your keyword
list and it also lets you see which of those keywords are most valuable to you as
a publisher. The Keyword Tool is easy enough to get the hang of. At first glance,
it may look like it’s just a generator for keyword ideas, but as you dig deeper into
using it, you can learn valuable facts about keywords, such as how much competition
there is for a keyword, what kind of placement an advertiser can expect
for ads targeting that keyword, and what the search volume is for the keyword.
Here’s how a typical keyword search using the Keyword Tool works:
1. Point your browser to https://adwords.google.com/select/
KeywordToolExternal.
2. Under the How Would You Like to Generate Keyword Ideas? heading,
select the Descriptive Words or Phrases radio button.
3. Enter a few keywords from your list into the center text box, as shown
, and then click Get Keyword Ideas.
After a few seconds (the exact time depends on the number of words
you enter), the suggested keywords appear beneath the search box, The default information shown includes the Advertiser Competition
(how many advertisers are bidding on that keyword), the previous
month’s Search Volume (how often that keyword was searched for in
the past month), and the Avg Search Volume. (The average is figured
monthly, based on the number of searches each month for the past
year.) Each statistic is represented by a colored bar, representative of
what you see in a bar graph. The more color in the bar, the greater the
competition or volume.
The average cost of a keyword to the advertiser doesn’t appear automatically,
but you can change the way the keywords are filtered (see
with the Filter drop-down menu.
4. To determine the average cost of a keyword, choose Show Estimated
Avg. CPC from the Filter drop-down menu.
The CPC, or cost-per-click, is the amount that it costs an advertiser every
time one of their ads based on that keyword is clicked. That amount is
paid to Google, which then distributes portions of the money to AdSense
publishers that allow those ads to be shown on their Web sites. Of
course, Google keeps a fair chunk of it to line its own pockets, too.
After you make your selection from the Filter drop-down menu, another
small section appears immediately below the Filter drop-down menu 5. Choose your currency from the menu provided; and then in the text
box beside it, enter the maximum CPC and click Recalculate.
The keyword list changes slightly, and a new column appears with the
estimated average cost-per-click (CPC) for each keyword suggested,
. Now you not only see the competition for the
keyword or phrase, but you also see what it costs advertisers who use
those words. Only a percentage of that is paid to publishers (you) who
show the ads, but this gives you an idea of how valuable your available
ad space is, based on the keywords you use on your Web site.
income in mind, use a high figure for your maximum CPC, like $50 per
click. This really doesn’t determine how much you make per click on
advertisements that appear on your site, but it gives you an idea of
which keywords you’ll be paid the most for. In keyword marketing, the
advertiser pays a fee to display ads. How much they pay for that privilege
directly affects how much you make. So, the more a keyword costs
the advertiser, the more you’ll make as a publisher of those ads.
Keep in mind that whatever keywords you choose should be used intelligently
on your Web page. If you include the keywords but don’t use them properly,
you’ll do yourself more harm than good by causing inappropriate ads to
appear or by causing Google to disqualify your site from the AdSense program
for not following proper Web design practices. More information about Web
design practices can be found in Chapter 3, and I address how to properly use
keywords on your Web pages in the next few sections, so keep reading.
The importance of keyword placement
After you finish researching your keywords and then selecting the most
valuable — those worth most to your pocketbook — and the most appropriate
words for your Web site, you have to actually integrate them into your Web
site. Using those valuable and appropriate keywords in your site’s content is
good practice, and more information about how to use those words in your
content is in the section “It’s all about placement,” later in this chapter, or you
can flip back to Chapter 3 for even more Web design help. But there’s more to
keyword placement than just putting the words into the content on the page,
as the next few sections make clear.
Placing keywords in site design
Face it: You don’t need much of the old gray matter to place keywords in
prominent places in the content of your Web site. Stick them in a title, a few
headings, or the opening paragraph and voilà — you’ve placed your keywords.
The thing is, if any idiot can do it, many will; which means that all
those Web sites with keywords prominently placed in the text start looking
alike — at least to Web crawlers sent out by search engines. To make your
site stand out, feature your keywords in the less-obvious corners of your
Web site, such as places that may never be seen by Web site visitors but are
visited by Web crawlers. “Where are these dark corners?” you ask. Read on
to discover the hidden mysteries of Web site design.
When you’re designing your Web site, there are places under the hood — in
the actual HTML (HyperText Markup Language) structure of the site, in other
words — that you can use as hidden storage areas for placing informational
tidbits about your site. Because all this stuff is information about your Web
site content — information about your information, in other words — such
tidbits are referred to as metadata, or data about your data. Metadata is
placed within special HTML tags (dubbed, curiously enough, metatags) within
the code for a Web site that search engine crawlers then read when cataloging
your site for inclusion in search results. As such, you’d be smart to stuff
your metatags with as many keywords as your HTML structure will bear.
Metatags where keywords should appear include the following:
Title metatags
Description metatags
Keyword metatags
Heading metatags
Alt text
Now, for those of you out there who are faint-of-heart when it comes to HTML
coding, be aware that you need to physically place these metatags (with the
exception of the alt text) in the top section of the HTML code of your Web
page, between the tags that indicate the head of your page.part of the raw HTML code for the Google Geek Web site, including the head
tag, metatags, and body tag.
As I mention earlier, metadata are usually indicated within the HTML of your
Web site as metatags.
The head tags usually have far more information between them because this
is where the heading of your Web site is set up. Information about the colors,
images , and styles of the page are also included here, but those don’t really
concern you when you’re thinking about keywords. Those elements are all
associated with site design, not keyword placement.
Working with alt text
Another area in which you can place your keywords is the alt text on your page.
Alt text is the alternative text that’s used to describe images on your page to
search engines and to site visitors who can’t view the images. This alt text is usually
included in the image tag in your page’s HTML and looks something like this:

Alt text should be limited to as few effective words as possible. So, if the
image on your Web site is a magnifying glass, the alt text might simply be
search if that’s one of your keywords.
Adding keywords to the HTML descriptors on your Web site is far from a difficult
task. When you know where to put the keywords, it takes little time to do it. If
you’re writing your Web site code from scratch, you can insert your keywords
in the appropriate places while you write it. If you’re using an HTML editor or a
WYSIWYG — what you see is what you get — Web site design program, you can
switch to the HTML view for the HTML editor and add the tags that way.
The extra effort improves the search engine rankings for your site and ultimately
makes it easier for Google to find the right AdSense ads to appear on
your site. The tags also help to ensure that ads appearing on your site are
targeted to the correct audience — assuming that the keywords you’re using
are well targeted.
The secret of keyword density
If you’ve been following along in this chapter so far, you’ve already found
out that your chosen keywords need to appear somewhere in your content.
(D’oh!) Clearly, your Web site articles and other elements (stuff like video
content) should be targeting the topics your potential visitors are searching
for — which means your articles and other elements will have your keywords
embedded in them somewhere.
That’s pretty much a no-brainer. But if you take this a little bit further, it gets
a bit more interesting. Some folks might be tempted to adopt what I call an
in for a penny, in for a pound strategy — if a little bit of something is a good
thing, a lot of something is a very good thing. Why settle for a sprinkling of
keywords on your Web site when, with a little bit of effort, you can saturate
your Web site with a veritable blizzard of keywords?
Why indeed? Because if you yield to temptation, you’re guilty of committing
keyword spam, the act of deploying your keywords merely to increase
search engine results placement (bad!) rather than using them to provide site
visitors with desired information (good!). No one likes spam. You don’t like
spam, your potential Web visitors don’t like spam, and even spammers don’t
like spam. Keyword spam doesn’t even help you increase your search engine
results placement. In fact, Web crawlers that recognize keyword spam can
get your number and list your site deeper in search results, or worse, completely
de-list your site from those results.
The secret to having the right balance of keywords in your site content is
keyword density — the ratio of keyword occurrences to the overall number
of words used on your site. Search engines vary on what’s acceptable for a
keyword density. Google, for example, looks for a keyword density of around
2 percent, whereas Yahoo! and MSN look for a keyword density closer to 5
percent. Remember, these are guidelines. So, if your keyword density is less
than 5 percent, your page will still appear in Yahoo! and MSN search results.
But over 2 percent and you might be penalized by Google.
Most folks who do search engine optimization for a living tend to stay around
the 2 percent keyword density mark to stay in Google’s good graces.
Time to picture what a 2 percent keyword density might actually look like.
Think of it this way: If the page contains an article that’s 1,000 words in
length, your selected keyword or phrase should appear no more than 20
times in the article. Twenty seems like a small number until you start adding
keywords to articles and then you find that it takes some serious work to
spin 1,000 words around one word or phrase and still have everything make
sense and not sound repetitive.
The key here is to build an article around a specific topic, like “credit monitoring,”
but then not to go overboard using the keyword or term — which in
this case is “credit monitoring.” The article should be a coherent information
piece, and the use of the keyword or phrase will automatically grow out of
that. You just have to be careful not to stuff that keyword or phrase into the
article out of context in a misguided attempt to use your selected keyword as
often as possible.
One trick that might help, though, involves thinking outside your body text
box. It turns out that putting keywords into the body text of your article is
only half the work when you’re dealing with keywords. Keywords should also
appear in the title and the headings of articles you place on your Web site.
Titles and headings are also given additional weight in search engine rankings
because those are the elements on a page that catch a visitor’s eye.
Think of it as being like reading a newspaper. Most people scan a page of the
newspaper before committing to reading any of it. They look at headlines,
paragraph headings, and bold or italicized text before they decide which
stories to read. Reading behavior is the same online — someone clicks onto
your page, scans the titles, headings, and specially formatted sections of the
articles there, and then decides to read deeper or click away.
Keywords in your titles and headings help pull readers into the content of the
article and help search crawlers classify your site by those keywords. See,
search crawlers are designed to weigh the appearance of keywords in certain
places — like titles and headings — just like people do. It’s written into their
programming, so you might think of a search crawler as the ultimate reader.

The Magic of Linking Well

Search engine optimization plays a key role in generating AdSense income
because how well your Web site places in search results determines how
much traffic your site sees. If you plan to have AdSense ads on your site and
you hope to generate a decent revenue stream with them, having a welloptimized
site is essential. And part of site optimization is having a linking
structure — the links that connect the pages of your site together as well as
the links that connect your page to other pages on the Web — that leads to
other, complementary sites as well as having other sites link to you. Like keyword
placement, link management is almost as much of an art form as it is a
strategy.
Linking schemes
Linking schemes are nothing more than the structure of how your Web site
is linked to other sites, how other sites are linked to you, and where internal
links lead. Good Web design principles include all three types of linking
schemes, and all are important to search engines because what a search
crawler is looking for is site usability first — how easy it is for visitors to go
from one place to the next on your Web site — and then site relevancy, or
how appropriate your site is to the topic for which a site visitor is searching.
Crawlers literally follow all the links on a Web page to make sure that what’s
connected together makes sense and is useful in the context of where the
links appear both in text and in navigational menus.
When you’re creating your linking schemes, remember that the ultimate goal
is to make your site as usable and as valuable as possible to your site visitors.
Assume that your visitors have landed on your page because it contains
information for which they’re searching; the idea here is to make your site as
valuable to those visitors as possible by providing your visitors with the info
they’re looking for and then some. (It’s the and then some that keeps them
coming back for more.)
Creating value for your user encompasses one concept — provide the user
the information he seeks. It’s that simple. That doesn’t mean that you need to
have every detail or product related to a specific topic on your site. But if you
don’t have it and you don’t plan to put it there, at least be prepared to point
visitors to another site that does have the information or products sought.
All of that is accomplished through linking. You’re either linking to another
page on your site where the information being sought is available or you’re
linking to another site entirely. In return, you should also have other sites
linking to your own, for the same reasons. (I have some tips on how to get
other sites to link back to you later in the chapter.)
Internal linking
Internal linking is the process by which the pages on your site are actually
linked together. The type of links isn’t nearly as important as the way
in which the pages are linked, but even the structure can have some benefits.
For example, text links — called hotlinks — can be more valuable than
graphic links because they allow you to use your keywords within the link.
But it’s also important to have a consistent navigational structure — the links
that usually grace the side or top of a page that lead to different sections of
your Web site. Both hotlinks and navigational links can be used in your internal
linking process.
Using keywords in your navigational structure gives you freebie opportunities
to use them — the keywords within links don’t count toward the keyword
density of a page because the percentage of times a keyword is used is
based solely on the content on the page. This means you can use your keywords
more often. But using hotlinks does count toward keyword density, so
be careful about how you place those links.
It’s also important that no matter how your links are formatted, you always
need to leave an escape hatch — every page on the site has to have a clearly
defined navigation area with easily recognizable links that make it a snap to
return to whatever page the visitor wants. Users who click from one page to
another in your Web site may not appreciate having to click the Back button
to get them back to the page they were previously on. Even more importantly,
if there’s no way for users to go back from whence they came, they’ll
leave. Typical surfer behavior when they can’t escape a page is to close
the window or browser that’s pointing to the site on which you have them
trapped. They may also just type a new address in the browser bar and navigate
away from your page that way.
Internal links all qualify as navigational links, even when they include hotlinks.
Use these links wisely, and always provide a way for users to navigate back
the way they came. I don’t care whose fault it is; if you lock a visitor in Web
page hell, she’ll leave and probably won’t come back.
It’s far better to have all your pages (even those that are unrelated) connected
in a loose kind of way. Every page should have a way to go back to
the main page as well as a way for visitors to get back at least to the previous
page if not to the beginning of a section. It may be that your navigational
structure expands to show previous pages or sections of your Web site,
based on where the visitor is on the site at any given moment. Whatever you
choose to do, make sure visitors have plenty of ways out.
When you’re creating the way that your internal pages are linked, also remember
to keep like pages grouped together. When you think of the structure of
your Web site, think of it as a tree. The trunk of the tree is your main page, and
each of the branches is a major topic. Subtopics are the smaller branches off
the main branches, and the leaves are individual pages of information.
If you were to draw your Web site structure, it should resemble (in an
abstract kind of way) a tree lying on its side, as shown in Figure 4-6.
Each different topic of content on your Web site should be related to the
overall theme of the site — nobody would argue with that — but each topic
should also be further broken down into smaller categories so that site visitors
can quickly find what they’re looking for. For example, if your site is
about healthy cooking, every page on your site should be related to healthy
cooking. However, individual sections of your site can be broken down into
the different types of dishes that you cook or the techniques that you use to
create healthy dishes. Keep like content together and keep it all related to the
main theme of the Web site.
External linking
External linking — the links you use to connect your Web sites to other relevant
sites on the Web — is also going to play a major role in the way that
your Web site is categorized by search engine crawlers. External links lead
away from your page, and for this reason, many Web site designers think
it’s best to avoid external links on a page. Not true. In fact, if you don’t have
some element of external linking on your page, it becomes an obstacle in
both search rankings and in helping potential visitors find the information
they’re searching for.
Search crawlers look for external linking on a page as a sign of how well connected
the page is to the industry or category that it’s included in. For example,
if your site is about mental health issues, users will expect to find links
to other sites on the same topic. Crawlers will too. And if a crawler examines
your site and finds you’re not linked to other related sites, it devalues the
site, assuming that the site will be less useful to site visitors (because no
single site can have every piece of information about a topic or category).
What you don’t want to do is create a Web page that’s an island — surrounded
by cyberspace, but cut off from everything. Even the most beautiful islands can
become useless if nothing connects them to the rest of the world. And if your
Web site isn’t connected to other Web sites, (especially where search crawlers
are concerned), the usability rating of the site falls considerably.
It’s necessary to have outgoing and incoming external links to your site. But
there’s a catch (isn’t there always?): The external links on your site should
lead to or from other sites that are relevant to the content on your site. If
you’re linking to other sites in some disorderly, couldn’t-figure-it-out-witha-
clear-explanation kind of way, you might as well not have any links at all.
Search crawlers follow every link leading out from your site and will evaluate
the content on the linked site for relevancy. If the content doesn’t compute,
your search rankings will plummet.
Having one or two links to unrelated sites isn’t a big worry. It’s not at all
unusual for your best friend, who sells handmade soaps, to link to your Web
site about money management. But if you want search engines to take notice
of your Web site, I recommend that you have far more links to other sites
related to money-management vehicles, tools, and information.
Reciprocal linking
One way to gather links to your site and to share your site with other relevant
Web sites is to use reciprocal linking. Reciprocal linking is the new-age
version of you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. You find sites that would be
of interest to your site visitors and then approach the Web site owner with
the offer of putting a link to her site on your own if she’ll do the same for you
in exchange.
It’s a good strategy to get some inbound links built into your site if it’s a new
site, but don’t rely on this type of linking to gain you much favor with search
crawlers. A limited amount of reciprocal linking is acceptable, but when a
search engine is examining the links to your site, it ranks them by determining
if the keywords used on your Web site are similar to the keywords on the
sites that are linking to you. That’s why links always need to be generated
out of true interest in the content on your site. If your link to another page
is matched by a link back to your own page on too many pages, the value of
those links is lessened because the pattern of “I’ll link to you if you link to
me” becomes obvious.
Think about the wildly popular Web sites in your business (or personal)
scope. Even better than just thinking about it, surf on over there and have a
look. Click through a few of the external links on the page and look at where
they lead. Are there links back to the page you just left? In most cases, the
answer to that will likely be “No” because the most popular pages on the
Web don’t need reciprocal linking schemes. People link to them all the time
because the site offers information that’s of interest to everyone concerned
with that topic.
It’s all about placement
One last strategy to extend your linking mileage: Where you place your links
matters. When a crawler is navigating through your site, it’s looking at the
usability of your site. So, if you’re hiding links in places that users can’t find
them simply to improve your Web site ranking, you’ll find your Web site in
search results’ nether regions. And yes, that’s a trick some Web site designers
really use. The idea behind hidden links is to have them there because
you must have that linking structure, but to have the links hidden in places
users don’t think to click so they won’t navigate away from your Web site.
Wrong move. That kind of linking strategy will turn the curious search
crawler into a snotty search crawler that doesn’t score your Web site well for
ranking purposes.
Keep in mind that hidden links are very different from strategies like using
metadata keywords, as I talk about earlier in this chapter. Metadata keywords
and tags are built into the structure of your site and are designed to provide
additional information to crawlers. Hidden links and keywords are actually built
into the visitor-facing structure or user interface. Hidden links and keywords,
however, are intentionally blended into the site so that visitors can’t see them.
This is a deceptive way to include elements of Web design that crawlers look for
but that a Web site owner might not want the site visitor to see.
Creating a well-designed site that uses a more traditional link placement
structure is much better. Not only are Web surfers accustomed to seeing a
navigation structure, or links, in a few places (the top of the page, the left
side of the page, or within the text), but a well-designed site meets a need —
the visitor’s need for information. By meeting that need, you give visitors a
reason to return to your site again and again.
Most often on a well-designed site, some combination of those navigation
structures is going on. Most Web sites have their main navigation bar on the
left side of the page, and users know that that’s where they can usually go
to find the link to the next page within the site. Links to other sites can be
included in the text or in combination with the navigational structure on the
sides of the page.
Once in a while, a page will have the main navigational structure on the right.
In fact, that’s a common structure in blogs, and there’s nothing wrong with
setting up your page that way. Web crawlers don’t give a hoot if your navigational
structure and other links are located on one side of the page or the
other. But it’s important that however you decide to do it on the main page
of your Web site, you maintain that structure across every other page on the
site. Users get frustrated if the navigation scheme changes on every single
page, and Web crawlers will notice the inconsistency and lower the usability
ranking of your site.
Keyword marketing is like watching the news. A big story could hit today, and
it might hang around for a few days until journalists have wrung all the interest
out of the story. Then something else happens, and those same journalists toss
that story aside in favor of the newer, more interesting piece of news.
With keyword marketing, marketers might be willing to fight hard to win
the bids on one keyword today, only to find that another keyword is much
more popular and worth more to them in advertisements tomorrow. These
changes affect the income that you make from each click through, as well as
affecting the click throughs themselves. When the higher-paying marketer
moves on, it opens a keyword for lower-paying advertisers. Sometimes,
though, those lower-paying advertisers aren’t writing ads that are as appealing
to your users.
Users’ moods change, too. What they’re interested in today will certainly not
be the same tomorrow or next week. So, to keep your CTR optimized, you
have to stay on top of your keywords. Watch the effectiveness of the keywords
around which your Web site is built. And don’t be afraid to test new
and different keywords, especially if your traffic statistics begin to fall. Your
AdSense income depends on you staying at the razor’s edge of the marketing
curve. And that requires attention from you.