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Creating Keyword Rich Pages
By Sumantra Roy
Once you have established the keywords for which you should optimize your site for the search engines, it is time to figure out how you can get a high ranking in the search engines for those keywords. The solution is to create Keyword Rich Pages (KRPs) - pages which provide good content and in which a particular keyword is repeated a number of times so that the page gets a top ranking for that keyword.
This article is focused on how you should create these KRPs. I am assuming you have a working knowledge of the different HTML tags like the Title tag, the Meta Description tag, the Meta Keywords tag, the Heading tags, the Alt Tag etc. If you don't, click here for a good introduction to such HTML tags.
Now, let us assume that your company sells packaged tours to Australia, and that you are targeting the keyword "travel to australia". Here's how you create the KRPs:
The Title Tag:
The first and most important tag to consider is the Title tag. You should always begin the Title tag with the keyword that you are targeting. Also remember that the search engines are going to display the Title tag while they are displaying the results of a search. Hence, you need to make the Title tag attractive to humans as well.
Here is one Title tag that I may have used: "Travel to Australia and discover its scenic beauty". Have a look at the Title tag - it uses the keyword right at the beginning and also tells people how beautiful a place Australia is.
Of course, all Titles need not be like the one I used. The Title that you use depends on the subject matter of your site. However, you should follow all the general rules that I have outlined here.
Meta Description Tag:
The Meta Description tag is used by many search engines to provide a short description of the page that is listed in the search results. Hence, like the Title tag, it is important that the Meta Description tag be keyword rich as well as attractive to humans.
The rules for the Meta Description are more or less the same as those for the Title tag. However, the content of this tag will generally be longer than that of the Title. Here's what I may have used in the Meta Description tag:
"Travel to Australia - We take care of all the details of your trip so that you can travel with complete peace of mind."
Note how this description repeats the keyword and also the benefit that it stresses - it says that the customer will be able to travel without having to worry about the intricate details of the trip - you will take care of them.
Meta Keywords Tag:
The Meta Keywords tag has become less and less important as far as search engine optimization is concerned. In fact, you can get top rankings without having anything in the Meta Keywords tag at all. However, just to be on the safe side, you would want to include some keywords in the Meta Keywords tag. You should also include some of the common upper/lower case variations of the keyword. The rules for the Meta Keywords tag are pretty simple - don't repeat any keyword in the Meta Keywords tag more than three times and don't repeat any keyword one after the other. Here's what I may have used in the Meta Keywords tag:
"Travel to Australia, tourism, travel to Australia, Down Under, TRAVEL TO AUSTRALIA"
Note how I have introduced "tourism" and "Down Under" just to separate the different instances of the keyword.
Body of the page:
Now we come to the actual body of the page. Begin by getting hold of a nice (but not too large) picture which is applicable for the page that you are creating. In the present case, I might include a picture of the lotus shaped Sydney Opera House. Place this picture at the top of the page. In the Alt tag for the picture, just mention your target keyword once, i.e. the Alt tag would be "Travel to Australia". You can include other words in the Alt tag, but it should start with the keyword you are targeting.
Once you've put up the picture, it is time to create a Heading for your page. Use the H1 tag to do so. Again, in the H1 tag, mention your target keyword once, i.e. like the Alt tag for the picture, the H1 tag could be "Travel to Australia". Again, like the Alt tag, you can include other words in the heading, but the heading should start with the keyword you are targeting.
Now it's time to create the actual text of the page. The way you create the text of your page would depend largely on what you want the visitor to do after reading this page. In some cases, you may simply want the visitor to go to the home page or another specific page in your site after reading this page. In this case, you should write the text in such a way that the visitor is attracted to the page that you are targeting. You would also want to provide links to the home page or the specific page that you are targeting at strategic places in the KRP. Or, you may want the visitor to click on the link to an affiliate program that you are a member of. In this case, you would stress the benefits that the visitor gets by purchasing the product or service that the affiliate program is selling. You would also want to provide links to the affiliate program at strategic places in the page and/or at the end of the page. Whatever it is that you want your page to do, there are some general rules to follow:
1) The first thing to remember is that some search engines don't recognize the Meta Description tag. These search engines will often simply take the first few lines of text in the body of your page and display that as the description. Hence, you must ensure that the first few lines of text in your page are attractive to human beings.
2) Ensure that as many sentences as possible in the page contain your target keyword once. The keyword shouldn't just be placed on an ad hoc basis - the way the keyword is placed in every sentence should actually make grammatical sense and the repetition should be such that your human visitors do not feel that you have deliberately repeated a particular phrase throughout the page. This is not only important from the point of view of ensuring that your readers don't get a bad impression of your site, but also from the point of view of search engine optimization - the search engines may penalize your page for spamming if they find that you have randomly repeated the keyword throughout the page. Also, while repeating the keyword in the page, try to repeat the keyword once near the top of the page and once near the bottom.
3) Make sure that your paragraphs are not too long - each paragraph should be no more than 3 or 4 sentences long. This is because people on the web simply don't have the time or the inclination to read long paragraphs.
4) Try to ensure that the page contains links to other pages with the keyword being present in the text under the link. This can often lead to a higher ranking for your page.
5) If possible, link to other pages which have the keyword in the file names. This can again lead to a higher ranking for your page.
6) There is no hard and fast rule regarding the total number of words that should be present in the KRPs. As a rule of thumb, try to ensure that there are between 500-600 words. However, if the number of words falls a bit short of or exceeds this limit, don't worry too much.
Once you have created the page, ensure that the name of the file in which it is saved contains the keyword and that the individual words of the keyword are separated by hyphens. In this case, the name of the file would be travel-to-australia.html. This will get you a higher ranking in the few search engines which give a lot of emphasis on the keyword being present in the file name.
Now that you have created the KRP, you cannot simply upload it to your site and submit it to the search engines. This is because the search engines take a rather dim view of pages which only contain outgoing links to other pages but do not contain any incoming links from other pages. The search engines may penalize sites which have such pages.
What you should do is to provide a link to these KRPs from the home page of your site. Now, you don't want people who are seeing the home page to actually follow these links to the KRPs - you only want the search engines to follow these links. However, you can't create links with hidden text (i.e. text with the same color as the background color) in your page since the search engines will almost certainly penalize or even ban you for doing this.
What you should do is to create a small transparent gif image. Then, name this image with the same file name as the name of the KRP you have created. Hence, in this case, you should name the image travel-to-australia.gif. Then, add this image to the end of the home page and have it link to the KRP. Also, you should explicitly set the border of the image to 0 (add border = "0" to the img tag of the image). Otherwise, when you get the image to link to the KRP, a border may be visible. In case you don't want to create your own image, I have created a sample transparent gif image for you - you can get it here
That's it! When you want to target another keyword, create another KRP for it, make a copy of the image that you created for the first keyword, rename it to the file name of the new KRP, add the image to the home page and then link it to the new KRP. Repeat this process for every keyword that you are targeting. Once you have created all the KRPs and once you have got the home page to link to each of them, upload all the KRPs and the gif images to your site, and submit your home page and each of the KRPs to the search engines. When you are submitting these pages, to be on the safe side, make sure that you submit no more than 1 page per day to any search engine - otherwise, you run the risk of some search engines ignoring some of the pages you have submitted.
Follow all the rules that I have outlined in this article and you can soon see your search engine blues disappear for ever!
Article by Sumantra Roy
Sumantra is one of
the most respected search engine positioning specialists on the Internet. His
company, 1stSearchRanking, promise top placement in the search engines or ALL
your money back. Click
here to find out how Sumantra's company can place your site at the top of
the search engines.
Sumantra also publishes an excellent newsletter,
you can subscribe
here free.
The importance of having your own domain name cannot be over-emphasized. If you are running an online business, and don't yet have a domain name, you are probably losing thousands of dollars worth of business because of this. Why? Simply because, unless you have a domain name, your customers will simply not feel comfortable buying from you. In order to sell on the web, you need to build up your credibility. Having your own domain name is the first step in that process.
So, now that you are convinced that you need your own domain, how should you name your domain? Here are a few do's and dont's regarding this. While the availability of domains which follow all of these rules may have become limited, try to follow as many of these rules as possible.
1) Consider naming your company and registering a domain name starting with the digit 1. Better still, choose a name starting with "1st". Why? When people create directories of web sites, they have to decide how they are going to classify those web sites. One way to classify web sites is to list them on the basis of how "good" they are. Another way is to simply list them in chronological order (and sometimes in reverse chronological order) based on the dates the sites were submitted.
The other, and far more popular classification system is alphabetic. Now, the first character in the ASCII chart which can be used as the first character in a domain name is the digit 0. The next character is the digit 1. Normally, you wouldn't want to start a domain name with the digit 0 since it might send all the wrong signals to your customers. For instance, if we had named our domain 0SearchRanking.com, it would be telling our customers that we cannot get them any search engine rankings at all! Hence, unless you really have a good reason for doing so, you should avoid using domain names starting with the digit 0.
Instead name your domains starting with the digit 1. More specifically, name your domains starting with "1st". This will ensure that you get a high alphabetical placement in those directories which classify sites alphabetically. Furthermore, depending on the industry in which your company operates, it may also send the right message across to your customers - it indicates that you are the first company to consider in your industry.
And guess what - the mother of all directories - Yahoo! - lists web sites alphabetically based on the Title that had been submitted. Yahoo! wants the Title to be the official name of the site. This implies that sites which start with the digit 1 will be placed at or near the top of a category. Assuming that you can get your site listed in Yahoo!, just look at what a top ranking in one of the categories in Yahoo!'s directory can do for the popularity of your site!
Furthermore, a small caveat here. If you are going to name a domain starting with "1st", also register the domain which starts with "ist". Then, have the domain containing the vowel "i" redirect visitors to the domain containing the digit 1. This is because people will often type in 'ist' when they mean '1st' and vice-versa. Also, for every email alias that you create for the domain containing "1st " (like sales@1stcompany.com), you should create the corresponding email alias for the domain containing "ist" (like sales@istcompany.com).
Also, this strategy of registering domains starting with '1st' is mainly applicable if yours is a somewhat new company. If you own a well established concern with a well known domain, you simply cannot change your company name and your domain in a hurry because you will confuse your existing customers.
2) Don't want to start your domain name with "1st"? Consider starting it with "A", "B" or "C". Although domains starting with A, B or C will be listed after those starting with the 10 digits, you can still get a pretty high alphabetical placement with A, B or C.
3) Try to register a domain which contains a popular keyword applicable for your industry. This will help your customers remember your domain name better. Furthermore, for searches conducted in Yahoo!, a higher ranking will be given to those web sites which contain the keywords in the title. And according to Yahoo!'s instructions, the Title should always be the official name of the site. Thus, if the domain name contains a keyword, you will be able to include the keyword in the Title which will improve your ranking in Yahoo!. As a minor side-benefit, this can also help to increase the ranking of your web site in some search engines. Hence, in an ideal case, you should register a domain of the form 1st[keyword].com (without the brackets of course).
4) Don't register a domain containing the digit 0 in it, unless it is going to be part of a recognizable word (like 1000 or 2000). This is because the digit 0 is often confused with the vowel O. If you feel that you must register a domain with the digit 0, make sure that you also register the corresponding domain containing the vowel O.
5) Try to avoid using domains that contain '2' for "To', '4' for 'For', 'u' for 'You' and so on even if they seem to make your domain sound 'cool'. Your customers will easily get confused if you do so. However, if you must register such a domain, register the expanded form of the domain as well, i.e. if you are registering greatthings2do.com, also register greatthingstodo.com.
6) Should you or should you not use hyphens in your domain? Well, the jury is out on the question. While some Internet marketers will tell you that domains containing hyphens are difficult to remember, spell and pronounce, others will state that domains containing hyphens are, in fact, easy to remember, spell and pronounce. Go figure. Personally, I would feel that whether or not hyphens are helpful has to be determined on a case by case basis. However, if you register a domain containing hyphens, make sure that you also register the corresponding domain without the hyphens. Once you do that, you can simply redirect visitors from the domain without the hyphens to the domain with the hyphens.
7) Don't make your primary domain too long. Even though 67 character domains are a reality, exactly how many of your users will want to type a domain name like thisisanexampleofaverylargedomainname.com?
8) Always use ".com". If yours is a serious business site, avoid using domains ending in "nu" or "to". Your business will have little credibility if you do so. You can consider registering a ".net" domain, but since most people are familiar with ".com", it is better to stick to convention.
While it is unlikely that you will be able to register a domain which satisfies all the rules that I outlined above, try to follow as many of the above rules as you can. You can check out the availability of domain names and register new domains here.
Article by Sumantra Roy
Sumantra is one of
the most respected search engine positioning specialists on the Internet. His
company, 1stSearchRanking, promise top placement in the search engines or ALL
your money back. Click
here to find out how Sumantra's company can place your site at the top of
the search engines.
Sumantra also publishes an excellent newsletter,
you can subscribe
here free.
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1stSearchRanking by Sumantra
Roy
-Sumantra is one of the most respected search engine
positioning specialists on the Internet. His company, 1stSearchRanking, promise
top placement in the search engines or ALL your money back.
Find out how
Sumantra's company can place your site at the top of
the search engines.