Search Engine Optimization - Jesper Åström - Ideas worth keeping to yourself

Search Optimizers are the Internet Doctors

I talked to Christian Rudolf tonight about search. It is not uncommon that we talk about links, blog posts and what is happening in the onlinedom. We started talking about what the true essence of search optimization is really about. We both agree that it is about meeting the visitor with exactly the content they want to find for that query. In many cases we believe we are better than Google at determining this for the simple reason that we are people and they are mainly an algorithm.

6 Thoughts on Google search challenges for 2010

by Jesper Åström

There is a lot of talk about search engines and spam. Matt Cutts works his butt off trying to rid the SERPs of manipulation. On my end of the spectra, I am quite concerned. Not about the manipulation, but I am concerned of the measures being taken against it. Why do I say this? Well, basically the problem lies within links and the value that Google gives them.

Google Local Business Centre for Google Maps

by Jesper Åström

Found this video on YouTube, and I though I should share it as it is an important piece of the puzzle when taking control of your own brand online. As people are searching through many different means, this is perhaps the best way to make an instant impact on the search rankings.

Every Link comes with a Person(-a)

by Jesper Åström

Blog post about LSI and Co-Citation and how it is related to the way we as people judge each other in society. There are many similarities with judgmental preferences in off line life.

Duplicate content penalization – Exhibit A

by Jesper Åström

Duplicate content does penalize your website if your content exist on another strong domain. With penalization I mean that Google would push my page downwards in the SERPs because of that the content exists elsewhere. This means that if my content was supposed to be on page 1, then it is all of a sudden on page 3 or 5 or 10 or not in the index at all. with filtering they mean that you get grouped under the little thing called “similar” in the SERP snippet.

Where to put the keywords

by Jesper Åström

I will now continue my SEO 101 guide with explaining where to put the keywords for a particular page.

Just as you arrange your ordinary word document that is longer than just a page, you construct an index so that all people reading your document will have an easy overview of what they are reading. On a website this index is called the sitemap. (Now some of you think… “Isn’t that the start page??” NO IDIOT… I will deal with the start page later… but keep in mind that you do NOT… I repeat… do NOT put all the links to all your content on your start page)

In the sitemap you should put links to all the pages of your website. As you want your reader, google and all other interested to know where they end up you use the “jam jar method” to lable your links and the pages where the people will end up.

Jam Jar Method
Just as you don’t put “Sweet and sticky” on a jar of strawberry jam (because no one knows what’s in it) you don’t put a slogan or something catchy in a link to a page. You simply say what’s on the page or in the jar. As for the case of the Jam jar you would write “Strawberry Jam”, as for a web page explaining the recepie for strawberry jam, you would give it the name “Recepie – Strawberry Jam” or “Recepie for strawberry jam”.

Many people put catchy phrases in their links, or even worse, put “read more” in their links leading to pages. This method sucks as it doesn’t give the reader any notion on where he or she is going to end up.

On-Page keyword optimization
Once you are on the page there are some elements that search engines as well as people find more important than others.

The title
First of all it is the title of the page. This is what is seen as the link from Google. It is also what is seen in the field on the very top of your browser. The title is defined in the head meta text of the page. The tag you use to define it is <title>Your title</title>.

Creating a Keyword Site-map

by Jesper Åström

A keyword site-map should be created for any web project you engage in and that you aim to launch through the search engines. Not to confuse with the Google XML sitemap that should enlist all your web pages contained in your website, the keyword sitemap should contain:

all your used keywords
on what page your keywords are located
how different pages are interlinked
what external links you look to attain for each page
what internal links should point towards this page
it should also show what co-citation cluster you want to put your page

You should start out by listing your most important keywords. Then find their semantic neighbours by using Google Sets or Google KeywordTool. Each main page which a designated keyword needs to contain three sections:

News section
Some information that changes regularly because you want users and the search engine spider to like this page, return to it often and think of it as relevant and important

Extending keywords

by Jesper Åström

Extending keywords is a practice where you extend the concept of viewing your keyword as a theme. As it is meant to define your page, you should really try to include whatever words can complete your theme. If your main keyword or theme for the page is car insurance for example, you should think of whatever other words are related to car insurance.

Such words can be found in either Google KeywordTool or by using Google Sets. You can also search for you page keyword and look at what pages end up on top in the search engines. What other words, related to the word you are working with, are included in the top three results. I generally use SEO Quake to find what words have the highest density on top ranking webpages for the keyword I am pushing for.

Keywords

by Jesper Åström

What is a keyword?
It is debatable whether or not a keyword is one word or if it is a theme. What we know is that a keyword defines the content of a page. There is a misconception that you can have several keywords on one page. Each page should be optimized around its own keyword. No other pages on a website should be optimized for the same word.

A keyword…

…defines the page
…is unique
…matches a potential search queery from a user

Complete Guide to Search Engine Optimization

by Jesper Åström

As the web seems to be completely lacking of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) guides (not) I figure I have to make a run for it. Jokes aside, I haven’t found a really good guide that takes the user from a very basic level to a reasonably good level.

If you are a novice user who wants to learn more about Search Engine Optimization, you have come to the right place.