Keywords in the domain name
The first step for successfully optimizing your website is starting of with a domain name which is both relevant to the market you are targeting and a domain name which contains relevant keywords. It is sometimes hard to find an unregistered domain name which is specific to your market and contains strong keywords. If your domain name is unpronounceable, hard to remember or type in to the search bar it is more than likely that the amount of traffic you receive will be decreased before you even start developing your website. It is important that you research every possible domain name you can. Don’t just leave it to what the domain registration companies can come up with, you need to be creative doing a bit of keyword research would help here in finding the main keywords that you want to target and include them in your domain name.
The domain name should be prioritised as being one of the most important aspects of creating your website it can not only feature as the brand name of your site but also helps in communicating to people the topic of your website and helps to create users first judgements of your site. The domain name is largely important when you are seeking to rank highly in search engines and when you’re planning on receiving viral traffic too.
In recent years the TLD (Top Level Domain) has also been a hot topic debated by many webmasters. Whether this plays an importance in ranking highly in the search engines is something that has never been clear cut. The opinions between many webmasters and theories that they create are the only information you can use to come up with your own decision. Personally I believe that the TLD does play a role in search engine rankings however it is so minimal that to have your website and another website judged in the Google algorithm merely on the TLD would be inauspicious.
The domain name needs to include your primary keywords; a mistake often brought up by many sites including my own is that the primary keywords are not in the domain name. This heavily affects the optimization of the website and decreases your chances of competing against other websites.
Domain age
The age of your domain name also plays a role in SEO, for many years search engines have taken in to account the age of the domain name due to spam sites and link farms which usually last less than a year.
Now search engines don’t just take in to account the age of the domain but also how long the domain name has been registered for and the age of the content too. You may be finding search engines logic here a bit impractical however I believe it to be pure logic. If you were to set up a website merely to take advantage of search engines and the loopholes that can be found in their algorithms you would not register a domain name purely for the creation of this website for more than one year, it would be a waste of money as the website would probably be de-indexed and blacklisted after a couple of months so that’s where Google’s logic comes in to play they take in to account the length of time a domain has been registered to suggest how long the domain owner thinks there website may be around, or at least that the domain owner thinks the website is going to be around for that amount of time.
Next we have the domain and content age much like a bottle of wine left in the cellar to mature it becomes better with age. Well that’s what Google is suggesting here, they take the domain and content age as a measurement which is used in SEO. However the weight that is given to these factors is supposed to be minimal therefore anyone who is about to or just has created a website don’t cry it is not the end of the world.
Keywords in the URL
After you have created your website and targeted those all important keywords it is time to include these keywords in every part of your web page, this includes your URL.
The idea here is that you pick out your most important keywords in each and every page and when creating the file name and URL for the website include them.
For example
If you have just written an article on Affiliate marketing and the ten tips to success, your file name and URL maybe
www.yourwebsitename.com/Ten-top-tips-to-affiliate-marketing.php
This helps to optimize your overall web page; the URL is the domain name however with every different page on your website it differs. The file name and URL name for each page will be different to ensure users can access every page. Therefore you also want to ensure the URLs are not too long, easy to type and remember.
If I am creating a web page just for one certain article, I will generally use the article title as the URL this is because my title should be optimised when creating my article therefore it includes the main keywords that are included in my pages content.
Remember to not make your URL too long, don’t use too many hyphens and ensure you have typed everything correctly.
Hyphens in URL
It has been discussed and debated between many webmasters whether underscores or hyphens in your URL are better. I would say that dashes (hyphens) are better to include in your URLs and you can read here that Matt Cutts also thinks this.
There has been a lot of debate over which is better to use either the dash (hyphen) or the underscore.
Dash (Hyphen)
All-in-one-SEO
Underscore
All_in_one_SEO
Now usability studies also show that most people are likely to use the dash (hyphen) instead of an underscore, therefore this again strengthens the debate to use hyphens instead of underscores.
Overall though I would put it down to personal preference, although Matt Cutts does basically say, that if you want to please the Google search engine then dashes are a better symbol to use in between keywords, it is totally up to you.
Length of domain registration time
This is a topic which in the past has been a hot topic, according to Google domain names which have been registered for the longest length of 10 years are more valuable than those which will expire within the year. However what we do not know is how much more valuable, in my opinion it cannot be anything worth worrying about.
This is just another tactic of Google’s to put under the spotlight sites which look to be spammers. However it would be hard to judge every site which has only been registered for a year as a spamming site, therefore I feel this is an action they may use after your site has already been under analysis for sometime.
Nonetheless if you really want to ensure you get that number one spot, then I would suggest if you have the money, and plan on keeping your website for 10 years that you do register your domain, plus think of the money you will be saving from the discount you might get and you won’t have to worry about your domain expiring with out you renewing it, well for 10 years at least.
Keywords in Title Tags
Optimizing your title tags is one of the most important on page SEO strategies that you need to do. By using your main keywords in your title tag this not only affects your search engine rankings, helping to increase your SERP but will also have an effect on the amount of users who click to read your article.
The job of the title tag is to describe the main topic of your article by including your main keyword. Many people use the business name or company name in the title tag however I feel this wastes the amount of space your title tag can hold also making your title look unprofessional and in most cases it is irrelevant to the articles content. The title tag should be no longer than 80 characters containing your most relevant keywords; it should be clearly readable and easy to understand. The title tag is used by search engines as one of the most important pieces of information on your web page and it helps them determine the topic of your page.
The title tag is situated in the “head” section of your html page; all of your Meta tags should be located here including the most popular description and keywords tags. When you have created your web page the title tag will appear in the tab of your internet window and your user’s browser. The title tag also appears on the results pages of the search engines, which is there to give the users an idea of what the content is about, also enticing them to click on your website.
To ensure your title tag is fully optimized it is necessary to perform keyword research for your articles creation, this will not only be included in your title tag but also in most of the other places written about in this section.
Ensure that every page on your website has unique title tags and description tags.
Keywords in Meta tags
The Meta tags come after the title tag and usually include the description tag and the keywords tag, like the title tag these should include your main keywords for that page and be unique to each web page.
Meta Description Tag
This tag allows you to write a 200-250 character text insert which will appear in the search engine results page. However many search engines including Google tend to ignore the description tag and will some times take snippets of your description and automatically create there own which is used by drawing up words from the body of the page.
The description tag should contain the keywords which you included in your title tag and any other long tail keywords you are trying to rank highly for. Make sure the description tag is relevant to your pages content and persuades the reader to click on your website.
Meta Keywords Tag
In the past the keywords tag was far more superior than it is today, these days it is generally ignored by most of the search engines. However for the time it takes to correctly optimize your keywords tag I do believe it is worth doing accurately.
The keywords tag should include 5-7 keywords which are shown throughout your pages content. This is to allow each keyword a high percentage of strength compared to the overall amount of keywords you include, usually around 16%.
Keywords in content
Content is the number one key to optimizing a website in my opinion, and you may have heard the saying before “Content is king” well it is. You can write as much content as you like, your not restricted this gives you the totally freedom to add as many keywords as you would like. However, and this is a big however there are rules and if you just go ahead writing loads of content with a keyword in every sentence you will see these rules come in to action.
My first point to make is, write the content for the readers not for the search engines. A very common point that is made although that is because its such an important one to make, no matter how much content you put on your website if its all written for the search engines and not for the users, you can say bye bye to regular readers, the main traffic you will receive will be from unique viewers who will read the first paragraph then run away too. You need to ensure you write for the users however keeping it informative, entertaining and to the point. This is something you can’t learn over night like most of the other sections I have written about. Writing quality, entertaining straight to the point content which grasps the readers educates them and makes them want to read more is hard, its harder than hard it’s a skill which will take some people months even years to master. However it is a very important skill to have which will make your life much easier and your website more successful.
Keep the amount of keywords you include in your content down, you do not want Google penalizing you for keyword stuffing. The process of keyword stuffing is to have more than 10% of your overall pages content to be keywords. I would advise you keep the amount of keywords you include in your content down to about 5-7%.
Keywords in heading tags
The H1 headings tag has a large amount of strength in the Google algorithm and should be optimized on every single page of your website. The importance of this headings tag is undoubtedly strong thus you should take time to consider which keywords you include in your headings tag. Nevertheless keywords in this tag should be completely relevant to the content underneath it.
File sizes below 50kb (do not exceed 100kb)
I’ll keep this short, each page you create you want to ensure that the file size for each page is under 100kb, preferably keep it under 50kb this will not only ensure the page loads quick enough but also they are not favoured, keeping short pages is much better and advised rather than having one long page.
Frequency of website updates
The frequency of each update on your website also plays a part in search engine optimization, it is great when your website is updated daily with new articles or content and search engines love it too.
