SEOmoz Beginners Guide to SEO -Ch4 Part 3 Review

Keyword Usage and Targeting

SEOmoz Beginners Guide to SEO -Ch4 Part 3 Review is all about keywords.

They are the building block of search and so you need to get the grasp of what they are, how they affect the search results and where they need to be placed to maximize your chances of ranking and getting found.

The video and this part of the chapter will take you through key concepts.

You learn that search engines take a search query or keyword and place it in a database for that specific keyword.

It will then place that keyword it found in your content in some order ready for retrieval. Where your keyword ends up in relation to the same keyword taken from other web pages is determined by  a formula that only the search engines know but there are certain markers that can help you place better than your competition.

On Page Optimization

There are certain parts of the code you need to know about and this part of the chapter explains what they are.

The title tag is vital to know about.  The meta description is also a must. These are part of the page code that humans don’t see but that the search engines do see.

Getting the keyword into your URL is also important. Placing it in the title of your content, in the first paragraph and in a headline are all part of the marker list the search engine will use to determine what your web page is about.

So this information is a crucial part of the takeaway you need to know.

SEO Mistakes

This part of the chapter also makes some important points of what NOT to do.

Don’t stuff keywords and think the needless repetition will help rank the page. It won’t.

Keyword density is not a viable concept. This is the practice of placing a keyword as a certain percentage of your total word count.  Don’t bother, it doesn’t work.

The Meta keyword tag is also no longer of any value.  Here I differ in that I will put in Meta keywords for the discipline of focusing on the keyword and keyword phrases I want to put in my content. It helps me better think things through.

Another point to remember is that a keyword can be a one unit item or a phrase. Keyword phrases come in two word units, three word units and more. Longtail keywords are phrases of varying lengths.

So there you have it for this part of Chapter 4 of the SEOmoz Beginners Guide.

Have a look at the video and as always, if it is helpful,  please “tweet” it,”like” it, “Google+1″ it, Pin it or whatever way you want to pass it on. Many Thanks for your support.

For those readers in the crowd, there is a transcript of the video so just read on.

Hey, Claude Pelanne here, Affiliate Starting Line, welcome. This is the

continuation of the video series on the SEOmoz Beginner’s Guide to SEO.

This is still about chapter four. This is part three. This part is about

keyword usage and targeting. This is another really important section, I

think, because it’s got some very important information and some important

concepts in it.

 

First of all keywords; keywords are the fundamental to the search process.

Yes, they are. They’re the building blocks of language. They’re also the

fodder for the science of information retrieval. Search engines will take

keywords, keyword phrases, and put them into their own databases. So, they

create databases around a keyword or a keyword phrase.

 

So, they not only index pages and cache pages but they also create huge

databases of individual keywords and keyword phrases. In doing so, it’s

important to understand that it’s the context around the keyword that’s

important. In other words, the order in which the keywords are typed, the

spelling, the punctuation, the capitalization of these words, whether or

not they are at the top of the page, and certain portions and key markers

on the page. All of that is very important.

 

Just to illustrate that, let’s go take a look at a search for dog training.

If you type in dog training, just that straight up, you’re going to get

these results. You’re going to see these sites in this order, and you’re

going to see 97,800,000 results. That means that dog training has 97

million…

 

Let’s do a little more, dog training schools. So, here you’re going to see

28,100,000 results. You can check out these websites and do whatever you

want. Now, if you go to dog training schools in quotes, now you’re going to

get a completely different number. Dog training schools had 28,100,000. Dog

training schools in quotes – that means it’s going and finding pages that

have dog training schools in that exact order only – 370,000 results, and a

completely different return on what you see here.

 

That’s important to understand about keywords, the context in which they’re

typed. You’ll have to understand that when you’re searching online, you can

type it in without the quotes or you can type it in with the quotes. If you

do it with quotes, you’re going to get more exact, in my view, search

results.

 

Then, it also goes on to talk about keyword abuse. It dispels the whole

notion of keyword density. If you don’t know what it is, don’t worry about

it. You don’t need to know. It tells you that the number of times you use a

keyword on the page has no bearing on whether or not it’s going to make it

easier to have that page rank.

 

But what’s important to understand is the relative position of where that

keyword or keywords are located, where in the document it occurs, if it’s

other terms that are used with it, the main topic and subtopics. It depends

on whether they’re in the headers and in the certain titles. It goes on to

explain, in the next section, on-page optimization, exactly what it means

by that.

 

On-page optimization simply means you want that keyword phrase or that

keyword to appear in certain markers on the page, both the one that humans

see and the back end in the code that the search engine sees. So, one of

the places you want your keyword or keyword phrases, in the title tag.

That’s area number one. Number two; you want it near the top of the page so

that it will establish its importance.

 

You want it in the content of your material at least two or three times.

You want variations of that keyword or keyword phrase in there as well. If

you have a picture or an illustration, you want that keyword phrase in the

alt tag that describes what that picture is about. So, you want that phrase

in writing in the alt tag so that they search engine will know… Because

it can’t see the picture, so it needs something to describe what that

picture is.

 

You want it in the uniform resource locator. You want it in the URL in the

address bar. You don’t want a bunch of numbers and a funny looking address

identification for the website or the page. Then, you want it at least once

in a meta description tag. The meta description tag is a box in the code

back end. You don’t see it as a human, but the search engine sees it and it

describes what that page is about.

 

So, those are the key areas where you want it. Then it goes on to describe

what the title tag is, and how you have to be mindful that it can only be

65 to 70 characters. It’s important to place the keyword in front of the

title tag. You also, with SEOmoz, you can put the branding, your company

name at the end of the title tag, so that’s part of the branding of your

website.

 

You want to make sure that it’s a readable title tag, that it doesn’t sound

phoney. Then it goes on and describes other meta tags. These is code in the

back end. you won’t see this but the search engines see it. These tags tell

the search engines to do certain things.

 

An index, noindex; an index tag tells the search engine it can index the

content and put it in the database. A noindex does the reverse. It tells

the search engine “don’t index this”. A follow, nofollow; a follow tag

tells the search engines whether those links that it finds on your page and

your website should be followed to the next page, or wherever that link

leads. A nofollow tells the search engine, “Please, do not follow this

link.”

 

Now, you’ll get a lot of these in your link profile and it’s important to

know what those tags mean. Noarchive is used to restrict search engines

from saving a cache copy of the page. They may not want to have that page

cached and put away by the search engine, so you use this kind of a tag to

tell it not to do it. Nosnippet tells the search engines that they should

refrain from displaying a descriptive block of text next to the page’s

title.

 

Generally, when you pull up a search result, you’ll see the URL and then

you’re going to see some descriptive material in there. Sometimes it comes

from the meta description, sometimes it comes from a thing called a

snippet, and you’re telling it you don’t want that to happen.

 

Then sometimes you get tags that tell the search engine not to grab the

descriptive snippet from other directories. The ODP directory and the Yahoo

directory, I wouldn’t worry about those because the odds of your being in

those directories, unless you’re really dedicated, are low. But I wouldn’t

worry. It just tells the search engine “please, don’t put a descriptive

tag” that comes from one of those directories if the page is in it.

 

It goes on to describe the meta description. That’s another box in the

back, where I already mentioned that before. It describes and tells the

search engine what the page is about. There’s also a tag called the meta

keywords tag. It’s not that important anymore because too many people were

gaming the system by stuffing meta keywords and trying to rank for that.

 

Then, although these tags can have uses for search engines, that is a meta

refresh – a meta revisits, etc. – they are less critical. So, there are

other meta tags in there that are not as important.

 

So, the whole point behind this part of the chapter is to explain the key

concepts behind keywords. Where are those keywords, how they get found and

indexed by the search engines, where you should put those keywords on the

page and in the code behind the page, so that the search engine can find

you. If you look at a dog training site, here’s a dog training site. If you

take a look here at the code, you’re going to see that there’s a title

here, “How to Train a Dog: Dog Training Tips”.

 

You can see that dog training is in the title tag. It’s in there, so that’s

why it’s ranking for it, “Tips, techniques for home-based trainers.” So,

there’s a lot of information here that’s in the tag. That is the title tag.

That’s probably the most important part. Then, somewhere here there should

be a description. Here it is right here, a description. “Discover how to

train a dog with the right way to…”

 

This description tag is very important also, so you want it in there. This

has the keyword in there and it has a lot of “learn about clicker dog

training”. There’s the keyword again. “Dog whispering”, “puppy”… So, you

can see how important it is. “Dog training techniques,” there’s the keyword

again.

 

So, it’s important to understand how to apply this information when you’re

designing your website. Here, we just saw a website that’s doing it just

right. So, that’s it. This is part three in chapter four of the SEOmoz

Beginner’s Guide to SEO. I hope this video has been helpful. This is Claude

Pelanne at Affiliate Starting Line. Stay with it, stay well, and we’ll talk

soon.