Chapter 2: Optimize your site…

Sunday, July 26th, 2009 Blog, Real Estate, SEO by admin

Chapter 2: Optimize your site using the keywords you have chosen.

Optimize Your Site

The first test you run on your site should be a “Keyword Density” test.  The tool can be found here: 

http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-density/ 

This tool will help you find out how often the keywords you have chosen show up on any given page of your site. It calculates how often the keyword is used against the number of words on the page. Although it might seem like a good idea to use the keyword as often as possible, that tactic will actually harm your site. Search engines will not display results that contain “keyword spamming”. 

However, if you have not used the keyword often enough, the search engines will not differentiate the keywords from the other text. This will prevent your site from showing up when the keyword is searched. 

To use the tool, just type in a link to your site. 

Now, you should do two things. First, you should note the keyword density used by your competitors. Second, work on your keyword density so it matches that of your competitors. Make sure it is no higher than 10% – 12%. If you have too many keywords, you can get kicked off of the search engines’ indexing systems. This can cripple your chances of getting visitors to your site. 

Keywords should be put together with other terms that you want associated with your business, because they will show up together in search engine results. For example, if you write, “We are realtors with years of experience, many satisfied customers, and a working knowledge of Orlando real estate”, you are accomplishing two things. 

First, you are making a sentence that is pleasing to your human readers. Second, you are helping the search engine find the keywords “realtors” and “Orlando real estate” alongside trust-building words like “experience”, “satisfied”, and “knowledge”. This can help your site get more visits. 

If you’re curious about which keywords are most common on your site, try using this tool: www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword_cloud/. It will show you the most common and important keywords in large text, surrounded by the more minor keywords on your site. This is a good way to get a clear visual representation of what your website looks like to search engines. 

Another tool you should use is the spider simulator. It will display your site and your competitors’ sites and demonstrate how a search engine views the sites. Text within images and buttons cannot be seen by a search engine and will not count toward keyword density. 

However, you can remedy this by using CSS. This method allows your button image to appear as a background image but causes the text to “float” on top. Once this is done, search engines can see the text as a keyword. 

This job can often take a couple hours. If you don’t have time to learn how to use CSS and then to implement it, there are two other options. One is to add ALT tags to each graphic. Another choice is to use text to add a second navigation for each button at the bottom of each page. 

The third tool is YOU! Take a look at your site and make sure the title text relates to your content and goals. It should be relevant and have the keywords by which you want the site to be ranked. Title text is read by many search engines and considered more important than the normal text. 

The title text appears at the top of the browser. In the screen shot below, the title text is “Orlando Regional Realtor Association”. The title text should describe the page in a concise, professional manner. 

If you need to change the title text, you can do so by taking a few simple steps. Open the program you use for editing your site and view the source. The title text field will appear at the top of the page source. 

In our example, you can see that the title text is between the <TITLE></TITLE> tags. Although your title text should include a few keywords, don’t pack in too many; that will just clutter your title. Instead, use only the best ones. One good format for the title text is to have the name of the content, the name of the section, and then the name of the site. Here’s an example: 

How to Find a Realtor – Friendly Advice – Orlando Realtor. This would be an article about helping visitors find a realtor. It would be in an advice section that is part of your website, “Orlando Realtor”. 

However, this example is only one way of writing the title. Almost any format will work as long as it stays consistent. 

When editing your site, you’ll notice the DESCRIPTION and KEYWORD fields. The description box should contain a helpful description of your site. All your keywords should be written in the keyword content area. 

Even though many choose to leave these fields blank, this is not a good idea. You can improve your ranking by adding text to the fields. Although various SEO experts have claimed this is not a useful method, it has been shown time and again that tags can help rank. 

Some engines may use the text in the description box as the supplementary or teaser text that appears below the page title. This is the sample text that is meant to draw browsing web users to click on your site’s link. With these search engines, solid description text is very important. Otherwise, your potential visitors may navigate to another website simply because it had a better description. 

It may take a lot of modification to fix your site so each page has proper title text, description, keywords, and keyword density. As you work, you should save and upload your changes to keep from losing your modifications. 

Metatags are words that are not visible on the website itself. A few of the metatags you are probably familiar with include keywords, the description, and the title. Because search engines sometimes make use of metatags when indexing, these are important elements. By using metatags to their best advantage, you can help your site come up during searches for certain keywords. It’s a simple way to get your site to appear higher in the search engine rankings. 

You can find free editing software for your website needs online. Try looking at www.thefreecountry.com/webmaster/htmleditors.shtml. This site offers a wide selection of free web editors, including the WYSIWYG, HTML, and PHP varieties. It’s a great resource.