Easy steps to develop SEO-friendly content

What is SEO-friendly content?
SEO- friendly content should be attractive as well as useful for the viewers; also it should be well optimized for search engine spiders, which in turn helps producing high ranking in search results.
Due to the content-centric nature of search engines, the need to write SEO-friendly content has grown immensely in SEO industry. All major search engines have become very smart in identifying the informative and interesting content as compare to the over optimized and senseless content. So in order to write SEO- friendly content you have to think about human being and search engine both and find balance between both. Illogical content having random links to other pages with same words repeated over and over again will never get indexed. Your first priority should be always to write content for the people not for the search engines

Things to consider, while designing SEO-friendly content:

1. How to use keywords
• Title Tag–The title tag is what visitors will see at the top of the browser window when your site first appears. It is the most important tag to consider when designing your web site. Place your main keywords at the beginning of the title tag, in order to form a meaningful and relevant title of the webpage.
• Meta tag-Make sure you write an attractive description for your description meta tag. This gets listed first to the visitors when search engine find your website relevant for that keyword. If the description does not capture your visitor's attention immediately you will lose your visitor to a competing web site.
• H1-H6 tags–Heading tags play important role in SEO, specially the H1 and H2 tags, try to incorporate the maximum use of important keywords in h1 and h2 tags. For example we can use keywords in sub-headings of top-para and bottom-para of a webpage as Search engines give a little more weightage to these tags. They also grab your visitor's attention faster than normal text.
• Keyword density-is the ratio of the word that is being searched for (the keyword) against the total number of words appearing on your web page. Google considers keyword density a prime factor in ranking pages in search engine results, more so than many other search engines. Take care that the individual keyword density (each keyword/ total words) should be between 1 to 6%. For that you can intertwine the keywords throughout the content like in the paragraphs where the keywords are used in the headings the usage of keywords in the paragraph further supports the relevancy of the heading as well as it increases the keyword density .
• Bold and Italics Keywords –Search engine pays extra attention to bold and Italics text so indexing of the webpage can be improved by bolding and italicizing the keywords in the paragraphs.
• Body Text–Stuff your webpage with the targeted keywords so that the flow of the content looks natural and the content make sense, avoid keyword spamming. It's always advisable to write the content for the visitor to a particular website and not for the search engines, as visitor-friendly content always get indexed faster.
• Internal and InboundLinks–Keywords which are used in anchor textof internal and inbound links are always indexed faster, but don't overdo this, try to incorporate the links naturally. For example avoid "click here" for anchor text, instead use some relevant keyword.
• ALT tags –We know that images enhance the readability of any webpage by providing site visitors instant visual stimulation. Always use alt tags with the images to guide the spiders what your images is about, as spiders cannot crawl the images but they can read alt tags.
2. What should be the structure of the Content
• Use short paragraphs with headings, generally long paragraphs are not easily digestible. Better to use Lists instead of paragraphs to enhance the readability.
• Use self explanatory images like charts, graphs or even some diagram which can convey the message as they are always preferred by readers. You can also use cartoons to explain something in a diagram.
• Always Proof-read your page for your spelling and grammar mistakes before publishing the content.
• Stick to the natural flow of the content by staying on a particular topic. Don't create confusion by moving here and there. Provide relevant and accurate content.

Vibrant colors, lot of animations, videos etc cannot impress search engines but the words surely can.
Summary:
Always concentrate on writing unique and informative content with appropriate keywords placed optimally. Avoid unnecessary stuffing the keywords in the content, as it is considered as spam by search engine, and you can get will penalized. So your focus should be to write SEO-friendly content which is designed to create a balance between search engine and human being. The content is optimized in such a way that it is easy to be understood by an average internet user and interesting as well, once this is done variouslink-building exercises can be performed later in order to increase the page rank.
How do you find this article? Please let me know if anything is remaining which should be considered while designing SEO- friendly content…

Ten golden rules to avoid SEO mistakes

SEO has become the key of success of any website in today’s world, but still there are people who ignore the SEO part of their website and try to either find some cheaper ways to optimize their website or self optimize their website without having knowledge of SEO. At Himshilp we do a thorough study of our client’s website and its competitor’s website and then perform research to find the title, description, keywords, H1 tags and content in the respective client’s site.

I want to list 10 golden rules which could be followed, in order to avoid common SEO mistakes to optimize the websites:


Avoid badly framed website title:
Website title plays an important role in determining the rank of a page by search engines. If your website has irrelevant title, then your webpage will be given less relevance by search engine. After scanning your page the search engine matches your content with the title and keywords of your page, so it is very important to take care of few things while designing the title.

1. One should never use a keyword more than once in the title.

2. Title tag should be framed with 10 - 60 characters, without any special characters.

3. Always place the important keywords in the title obeying the rule of leftward i.e. the
First word is best, second is second best, etc.

4. The title should always relate to the content of the webpage, its meta description and
meta keywords and should be legible by the user.

5. There should be distinct title and description of each page.

Don’t use duplicate/ insufficient content of the page:
Never design duplicate or bad content for your webpage. Insufficient or Duplicate content will not be tolerated by search engines, even your websites can be banned. Content is known as the king of the web. So always write a content which is unique, friendly. Then people would like to link to you. You can even hire people who write decent unique content by paying them some amount.


Check all your backlinks (Poor backlinks/ less backlinks are harmful):
The quantity of backlinks/ incoming links of a website represent its popularity. The number of backlinks replicates the number of votes caste for a particular website or a web page. Google consider backlinks as a very important factor to determine page rank. Don’t link to the websites which are not relevant to your website as it will not benefit you. Always link to a high page-rank website. Google doesn’t support link-exchange, so better not adopt it. One way quality backlinks are always better for SEO. There are various ways to increase the backlinks. The submission to Directories & Search Engine Submission is the easiest yet powerful and result oriented activity. Creating interesting blogs and articles are also very helpful to get quality backlinks to your website. The social networking profiles can also be used to bring backlinks to your website.

Check all your internal links:
Broken internal links create negative impact on SEO. Always validate all your internal links so that there are no broken links in your website. Using similar anchor text in all the links is also not advised. Anchor text is the text which is the visible part of a hyperlink, never use the same anchor text in all your links like click here or some thing which is irrelevant to that link. Anchor text link should contain keywords. Use hyphenated filenames, but not long ones - two or three hyphens only. And try to use keywords in the urls also.


Use header tags in the content appropriately:
One of the POSITIVE ON-Page SEO Factors is the usage of keyword in H1, H2 and H3 tags. We should use these tags in order to get the page optimized. But the problem with these tags is that they don’t look nice as such in the web browsers for h1, h2 tags are too large and h5, h6 are too small. So overall appearance of the webpage gets distorted. That’s why generally people ignore them. But with the advent of style sheets it has become very easy for the programmers to change the hierarchy of the tags, so that one can view them in the browser with the appropriate size. Also one should never use H1 tag more than once in a page.


Use keywords properly:
Keywords are wonderful weapon of your websites so never ignore them whether it is keywords in meta tag, url, meta description.

meta keywords: Never use common meta keywords in all the webpages of your website. It will be screened as duplicate content filter checks by the SE. The common rule for Keyword in keyword meta tag is to use less than 10 words. Every word in this tag MUST appear somewhere in the body text. If not, it can be punished for irrelevance. No single word should appear more than twice. If not, it may be considered as spamming.

Keyword in URL: Often people ignore the proper usage keywords in url, and it is stuffed with irrelevant words. Always use appropriate description of the page content in the url assuming this hierarchy First word is the best, second is the second best, etc.

Keyword in description meta tag: Do not put similar descriptions for all the pages. It should be unique for all the pages and relevant to the page content. Ideally it should contain less than 200 chars.

High Keyword density in body text: Ideally keyword density should be 5- 20% - (all keywords/ total words). Individual keyword density should be 1 - 6% - (each keyword/ total words). But if you are thinking that using keyword everywhere will make the page more relevant then its wrong assumption. Do not stuff keywords unreasonably everywhere.


Make proper XML sitemap of the website:
Sitemaps helps you communicate with the SE. Website gets indexed in various search engines by XML sitemap. So always update your sitemap so that your webpages get indexed easily in the search engines.


Use < img> tag properly:
Most of the times the images are overlooked in SEO. Long and meaningless names of the images convey nothing to the search engine, try to incorporate some keywords in the image name so that the search engine will list them. Use alt tag to describe the images. ALT tags should contain a description of what the image is. It is a labeling device to translate your image into text for search engines. It also translates your image into a textual reference for users with visual handicaps. So use < img> tag carefully.


Don’t use too much of javascript where it is not required:
Use as much as clean HTML code instead of javascript code as the search engine could not translate java script.


Have patience:
There is no shortcut to get listed in top 10 for the selected keywords. It takes time for a page to get indexed in Google. So have patience and be vigilant. Publish unique quality content, by validating it and reinsure that it gets indexed properly in the search engine, this is an ongoing process, so keep changing the content of the website since if you will optimize your website for once and take a backseat then you can be out of index.

Finally be cautious of those internet marketing firms who give you 100% assurance in getting the pages indexed. Even Google says that there is no rule to get the 100% optimization and the rules to optimize the webpage are keeps on changing so be vigilant and take the appropriate step.

How to improve the page rank of your website

Page Rank (often denoted by PR) is Google’s ranking software that calculates the relevance of a webpage with its content. Page Rank is a quantity (between 0 and 10) defined by Google that provides a rough estimate of the overall importance of a web page. The Google Toolbar can be obtained free of charge for Firefox and Internet Explorer.
Google has a page rank of 10 which is the highest your site can attain. The PR of your site is updated about once of month when Google updates their database of web pages. It exports new backlinks, PageRank, or directory data approximately every three months.
One highly effective method for attracting more web traffic is to first optimize the design of your web site. This will increase your page rank because search engines love sites that have clean code, are fast loading and contain lots of well written content. This ultimately results in gaining traffic which leads to more sales, a sign you have developed a profitable web site.
Below are few factors which can be incorporated to improve page rank of your website:

1.Backlinks are vital
Links to and from your site are an important off page factor for determining PageRank. Back links are Links pointing to your website from another website. The more back links you have the higher your PR will be. You can always check out your backlinks by querying Google using its link operator.
Learn how to increase the backlinks
All the links are not Equal – Quality, Relevancy and Quantity of Links Effect PageRank
•Quality of LinksLinks with high PR, who link to your page, carry more weightage than links with equal or less PR.
•Relevancy of LinksHowever, relevancy of links is equally important. If your website is about selling online lays chips and you want to get a backlink from a interior designing website then it is irrelevant.
Google looks to title tag an on page criterion of incoming links to determine relevancy and similarity. Pages whose relevancies are equal or similar to your page are given more weightage.
Another relevancy criterion for incoming links is how pages link to you. Ideally, you want the incoming link to use your keyword in its anchor text. For instance, if you want to create a link for “how to increase backlinks” then anchor text should be increase backlinks not click here.
•Quantity of LinksIf a high-ranking page links to your page, it has value. However, if the high ranking page links to you and a hundred other pages it has less value. Essentially, the voting weight of the incoming link is divided among all the links on that page.
Another quantity issue is “link Mills”/ “Link Farms”. A link mill is a page with nothing but links on it. Linking to link farms or mills can be extremely harmful. These “bad neighborhoods” are often banned sites.
The final quantity issue is timeliness of links. Too many links to your site too quickly sends a flag to Google.
In addition to taking into account the number of links to your page and the ranking of the linking page, to compute a page’s PageRank, Google considers hundreds of other factors including
• the click through rate (CTR) of Google’s search results, cached pages, favorites on the Google Toolbar
• when your site acquired the links
• how fast a site is gaining links
• the stickiness of your site (i.e., the effectiveness of your site in retaining individual users)

2.Update your website every day by adding more unique content
If you site has unique content for the visitors they will surely revisit your site.

3.Include useful high-quality information on your site
Web copy that is well written will naturally drive more traffic. And Make sure that you have your targeted keywords included in the content on your pages in a natural way. It will help your website listed in various search engines. Website owners reading your content will naturally want to link to your site without even asking for a link back.

4.Provide inside linking to your website
Internal links are links between internal pages of a website. For example if you have written an article to enhance the page rank of the website it could be interlinked with another article which is about page rank.

5.Create sitemap for your website
Create sitemap (XML based for Google and text based for yahoo) then submit sitemap to Google and submit sitemap to Yahoo. Get a Google webmaster account and sign in there to see your website statistics. It will also tell you if your site is indexed or not, and your page rank in Google.

6.Publicize your site to everyone with whom you communicate
Add your site’s URL, e.g., www.himshilp.com, to every piece of communication you initiate. Your Web address should be listed everywhere that your phone/fax number and mailing address e.g.,
• Letterhead
• Business cards
• Newsletters
• Brochures
• Press Releases
• Fax cover sheets
• Email signatures

7.Write a newsletter and send it out.
Inform people what’s new or remarkable on your site. The newsletter will remind people about your site and encourage them to visit to find appealing content.

8.Provide a Rich Site Summary (RSS).
RSS is “a lightweight XML format for distributing news headlines and other content on the Web.”
In addition to making it easy for other sites to distribute your headlines and content, your RSS feed will be indexed by popular Blog search engines, including Technorati, BlogSearch, and Ask.com Bloglines.

9.Keyword density:
Keyword density is the ratio of the word that is being searched for (the keyword) against the total number of words appearing on your web page. It has often been observed that Google considers keyword density a large factor in ranking pages in search engine results, more so than many other search engines. For example if your webpage is of “Page rank” and if you have used the keyword “page rank” only once in your webpage of thousand words then it has a lower keyword density than a keyword that occurs (say) four times in a page of similar length. Then the page wont be listed for that particular keyword since its keyword density is low.
So in order to improve your site's placement in the search engine results one needs to work on the keyword density on his page.

10.Perform the necessary Keyword research.
Keyword research plays very important role in determining the page rank. Your web copy is filled with words that visitors enter in the search engines. Intertwine these words throughout the content of your web site.

11.Construct meta tags that include your targeted keywords
Make sure you write an attractive description for your description meta tag. This gets listed first to the visitors when search engine find your website relevant for that keyword. If the description does not capture your visitor’s attention immediately you will lose your visitor to a competing web site.

12.Construct a meaningful Title tag.
The title tag is what visitors will see at the top of the browser window when your site first appears. It is the most important tag to consider when designing your web site. Place your main keywords at the beginning of the title tag. Don't place you site's name first. Most visitors will not be searching for your site name. They find you with the keywords they entered in the search engines.

13.Use heading tags for the headings and sub headings of your web site content.
Incorporate your keywords in < h1 > to < h6 > tags. Search engines give a little more weightage to these tags. They also grab your visitor’s attention faster than normal text.

14.Name files using your targeted keywords
When naming your css, image, javascript files etc, include your targeted keywords. Don't use the same keywords again and again in every file. It may be flagged as keyword spamming by the search engines.

15.Include keywords in page and directory names
Instead of giving your pages generic names, be creative and incorporate keywords in their urls.
For example rather than giving names to your pages like page1.htm, page2.htm… try to incorporate the keywords in their names, like improve-page-rank.htm will be a better choice for a webpage which is about improving the page rank of a webpage.
This will help the search engines to identify the keywords in your page url. If a site owner links to this page you will benefit by already having your keywords in your web page address.

16.Use keywords in your link text
If the links on your page have relevant keyword text in them, your page will receive higher rankings in the search engine results than those sites that don't.
For example, a link on your with the text "improve your page rank" will cause your site to be listed earlier if a visitor searches for "page rank" than if the link simply said "click here."

17.Optimize your images
Try to avoid using images to display important names, content, or links. Search engines don't spider images only text. Use ALT tags if any of the main content on your web page can't be written in regular HTML.
18.Create external files
Instead of loading your site with lots of css or javascript code, place all the code in an external file between your header tags. This will drastically reduce the load time of your pages and allow the search engines to easily spider your site.

19.JavaScript & SEO
JavaScript and images, conveys nothing to a search engine. The second thing is size. Search Engines actually have a limit to how much page content they will crawl. For instance, Googlebot has a 100 kb limit. Even though the Googlebot directive is to search for keywords and phrases, which are placed after the 100 kb limit are invisible to it.
Don't overload the HEAD section of your page with styles and scripts. Instead, you should link to external files.

20.Proximity & Hierarchy
Before you start optimizing the individual pages consider the closeness of keywords and phrases to the beginning of a page. The importance of the webpage decreases from left to right and from top to bottom. So the top left part of a webpage has highest importance. The search engine spider will read the content which is in the beginning of the page BEFORE the actual content of the page. For example if you have links tabs in the page, it is more important than the actual content of the page. Whereas human visitors generally ignore the links first and directly jump to the content of the page.
Search Engines also consider textual hierarchy. Just like writing an exam paper, a search engine looks for code clues to understand the outline of your page. To a spider, text in heading tag is more important than the normal text. Similarly bold, italicized, or underlined text has more importance than the plain text.
Google periodically changes how it calculates a page’s importance, thereby resulting in shifts in rankings, known as a Google Dance.