We shall use our sister site www.zipposuperstore.com to show you how easy SEO is, and that it can be done free. Zipposuperstore.com is an Australian site, but these tips can be used globally. Australian customers are our main focus, so we will use the stats from Google.com.au for our main keyword, zippo. As of 18/01/08 there are 28,700,000 pages listed, so if we want to rank on the first page for this targeted keyword we need SEO. First thing you need to do is find which keywords are being searched for. The two keyword research tools we use are:

http://inventory.overture.com/ ( when it works )
and
http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/index.php

Searching zippo on these sites, gives us these following most popular searched keywords: zippo, zippo lighters, zippo tricks and zippo lighter tricks. These are the keywords we want to target. But other searched for terms are collections, faqs and collectors, so we will want to use these keywords too. This will improve keyword densitity, which we will explain in future blogs.

Keywords of single words is useful to attract the general audience and helps in getting high ranks,if the web site is new. Keywords of single words should be used more in the root level pages or top level domain pages. This is because these pages are the ones that attract the general traffic & are generally the pages which do not specify specifics. Hence single word keywords based on themes can be targeted for on these pages. Read the rest of this entry »

I look at a lot of sites on a daily basis. There are a lot of common problems I see on sites. Some people may have tags set-up improperly or use tags that have no real purpose. I have compiled a list of the 5 top do-it-yourself SEO errors. It’s safe to say that many do-it-yourselfers may have at least one of these errors on their sites. These should help you omit these often costly mistakes and pull you up in the ranks.

1) Keyword tag – A keyword tag is for keywords, but not for any keywords. You can’t just stuff this tag with keywords that your entire site is related to. The tags should reflect keywords only on that particular page; not the entire site and not every keyword you think your site might be searched on. Also, you should have no more then 20 words in the tag. You should not repeat any word more than 3 times. If you sell tickets, for example, don’t write: Broadway tickets, circus tickets, hockey tickets, boxing tickets and so on. Do use Broadway, circus, hockey, boxing, tickets and so on.

2) Abstract tag – It is sometimes used as a replacement for or combined with a description tag. However, more and more people are using these to stuff keywords. Search engines like Google are interested in what is on the page. More specifically, what visitors can view. In my opinion, the abstract tag has no place on a site.

3) Description Tag – The whole point behind this tag is to describe what the “page” is about. Keywords related to the page should be implemented as well. The limit on words should be 20 – 25. I see many website owners stuffing this tag with keywords, or having a description that is entirely too lengthy. Stay within these guidelines and you will be fine.

4) Title tag – This, to me, is the most important tag. This is the first tag the search engine reads. It tells the search engine what the” page” is about. Don’t put your web address here. Do not add your company name in the beginning of this tag either. It should not exceed 60 characters.

5) Content- If you notice, I have been commenting on relevancy to the “page”, not your overall site. Each page has it’s own keywords. Tag the title tag, description and keyword tags. All of these keywords should be the same. Add them to your content as well. Now your page should be fairly well optimized.

Why do sites fall short? Simple, content is not optimized. Search engines are, for the most part, pretty basic. You type in a search term and it retrieves sites containing those terms while also taking a few other factors into account. So, if your site doesn’t have these terms, how will you be found? You won’t. Over do it with keywords and you will experience the same result, but for different reasons. Sometimes reading everything about SEO can be bad. Trying too many tricks, tips or methods is like too many cooks spoiling the soup. In the end they can do more bad than good. These are very basic rules that should be followed by all. In, doubt? Always consult or hire an SEO professional.

You can achieve high rankings and even have your website listed on pages 1 or 2 on Google for your main keywords simply by applying certain rules.

The one i think about most is… How can i help the search engines provide relevant search results!

While I am far from being an Search Engine Optimization ( SEO ) expert, i am just sharing experiences here, I’ve achieved some fantastic results by following these basic rules and without resorting to any ‘tricks’. More importantly, these are rankings that will last.

Please i am not suggesting you shouldn’t learn about SEO or use genuine search engine optimization software that helps, you should. But as usual i will try do this all free, as i have done on our site and will show you links to the websites we use for our search engine optimization a bit later.

You do not need to spend any money on SEO ebooks or other programmes when it is all available on the net free!
SEO can be done FREE, it just takes a little time and patience.

Sometimes SEO can even be fun, especially when i am spying on our competiors to see what they are doing.

Here are our rankings for our some of our main keywords

Google.com.au as of 28/12/01

zippo: rank 7 out of 28,600,000
zippo lighters: 3 out of 139,000
zippo tricks: 11 out of 42,500
zippo lighter tricks: 14 out of 36,500
zippo collections: 2 out of 147,000

On google.com

zippo: 42 out of 28,600,000
zippo lighters 18 out of 137,000
zippo tricks: 15 out of 42,600
zippo lighter tricks: 11 out of 36,800
zippo collections: 7 out of 147,000

While these are not exactly earth shattering results i think it’s not a bad effort for a first time website and done totally FREE. In the next few blogs i will be revealing all my secrets.

So please, check back and let me know your opinion on our SEO tips, how these tips have worked for you or maybe let us know about your search engine optimization tips