The latest Site Reference newsletter is reprinted here. The featured article titled “How to use SEO or Search Engine Optimization for High Google Listings” by Peter Nisbet. [Newsletter Reprint]


The latest Site Reference newsletter is reprinted here.

How to use SEO or Search Engine Optimization for High Google Listings

by Peter Nisbet

If you know how to use SEO to get a high listing in search engines, or are an expert in search engine optimization for high Google listings, then you need read no more of this article. Your website obviously has at least one page in the top 10 of Google, MSN and Yahoo, and you have as much traffic as you need for your success.

However, if not, then you need some advice. You need to understand the basics of search engine optimization. Incidentally, what the basics are to you may not be basics to others. Basics to some are the correct use of LSI (latent semantic indexing), of internal linking strategies and of other techniques designed to lead search engine spiders by the hand and convince them that their site is the tops. Can you do that?

If not, then here are one or two tips. Good SEO is a lot more than just having your page title in title tags and your heading in H1 tags. It is more that just having the correct keyword density – do you know what that is? The vast majority of people don’t have the slightest clue about keyword density or what it means. Formulae said to relate to keyword density and the number of words in the key phrase as a function of the number of times the phrase should appear in a web page are mediaeval in internet time.

Do you know what? Google doesn’t give a toss about your calculations. Google cares about the service you are providing to Google customers and how relevant the content of your web page is to their needs. To find that out, Google applies a statistical mathematical equation based on statistical analysis of semantics as related to the specific keyword being used by the searcher, and the semantic content of your web page.

Google doesn’t care if you have exactly 15 incidences of your keyword every 500 words – in fact if you do, you have no chance because that is now excessive. Keyword stuffing or keyword spamming they call it! Yet people still write articles packed full of keywords in the mistaken belief that it will be good for them. Who is still telling them that?

So let’s forget keyword density. It’s old SEO and no longer relates to Google’s needs. Internal linking: now there’s a new thing to most people, even though it has been relevant for the past few years. By intelligent use of internal linking you can lead your friendly neighbourhood spider down any web you can weave for it. And you will benefit greatly by doing so, if you know where you should be leading it.

Internal linking strategy is a different concept entirely to an external lining strategy involving one way or two way reciprocal links back to your web page from that of another website. Most people are involved in that, but also most don’t know how to do it properly, and therefore lose out. Let me give you a simple example.

You have a website with a page rank of 4 for your home page. Note that it is not your whole site that gets a Google PageRank, as it is properly written, but each individual page in your site is individually ranked. When you come across a website with a PR of 4 or even 8, it is the page you are looking at that has that PageRank. That will generally be the home page, and when you agree to a reciprocal link, guess what! Your link will be placed on a ‘links page’ in that site with a PR of zero. That’s right, a Google PageRank of zilch: and that’s the benefit you will get. Zilch!

If you place their link on your home page, or any other page with a PR of greater than zero, you lose out. Even if your page has a Google PageRank of only 1, THEN YOU LOSE OUT!! They get a share of your PR of 1, and you get a share of their PR of zero!

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, and then tell me I don’t know what I am talking about as many have. Some of these many are so-called internet gurus and SEO experts that fleece you by promising you a Google Page 1 position for your site, when they can’t even get one for themselves.

If a site offers you a top 10 position, check out their position by using their URL. If they were so good, wouldn’t they be in the top 10 for their URL? I would have though so! But NO.

So, do what you can to understand what Search Engine Optimization is. What it really is – not what some would want you to believe what it is. Check out the source code of successful sites and compare it to the unsuccessful sites and try to spot differences. If you cannot, then it is the linking strategies that make the difference. Whatever strategy you use, however, make sure that you fully understand it and that you are using it as it should be used. There are links and links – some better than others. Some can give you positive results, and some of your links can be very bad for you.

Do you know how to tell the difference? Most can’t, and so are led by what they read online. The problem is that since ‘most can’t’, most of what is written online is garbage. It is difficult to spot the truth from the opinion. It is truth that gets you a good Google or Yahoo listing, not opinion. The problem is that more people believe opinion than truth since they don’t know what truth is, and most of what they read is false opinion.

The best advice you can have is to check out the websites that have succeeded and copy what they do. However, that is not as easy as you think since the off-site linking strategy that you cannot see is as important as the on-site SEO that you can see.

About this author

If you want screenshots of a website that succeeds, the check out Pete’s site http://www.article-services.com that varies from #1 and #4 on Google for the keyword ‘article services’, and then find the screenshots and explanation of how he does it on http://www.improved-search-engine-rank.com That is how to learn: from successful sites.

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