I get asked all the time, how can I improve my website ranking? Well, at the very least you should follow these tips. There is no short cut, you have to read and learn. There is also no guarantee where you will rank on Google, no matter what you do to improve your ranking, but there are some basic things you can do to your site, to at least help positioning.

Here is an informative article on the basics of search engine optimization techniques.  This is a basic SEO and not a conclusive guide, but should give you some ideas to get you started.

1. Keywords / Keyword Phrases

Creating content for the web differs from normal writing. To write online copy, you need to learn about keywords, keyword phrases and keyword density at the very least. You need to adapt your writing style to target search engines, while also making you work enjoyable for readers.

A few years ago when building websites it was enough to simply add what was known as a “keyword meta tag” to the code which generated the website content. This meta tag was simply a list of keywords, like the following: <meta name=”keywords” content=”shoe, shoes, shoee, shos, footwear” />. This list of keywords helped Google identify what the page was about. Yes, you may even include mis-spelled words too.

It’s probably pretty obvious that this keyword tag was open to abuse, with people adding loads of keywords and even adding keywords that were not even relevant to the site content, just to get listed higher. It was not long before Google changed the relevance of this tag so that it had little if any bearing on position. Today, it is worth including the tag for other search engines but it does not affect Google position.

So how do you use keywords, keyword phrases and what’s keyword density. Keyword is actually somewhat of a misnomer, in fact you are best targeting a keyword phrase. People no longer use single keyword search phrases – the average search phrase contains 3-5 related words.

Anyway, Keywords or Keyword phrases are those words or phrases which a customer, or potential user of your website, would be likely to type into Google to find you. Choosing the right keywords to base your site optimization around is an important first step. General or generic keywords are usually not the best approach, and sometimes it’s better to be a little more specific and focus on niche keywords, relating to your product or service. Some keyword phrases can be ultra competitive, such as “make money”!

Taking for example a website selling fashionable shoes to young men and women. The problem is, there are a LOT of shoe retailers out there with websites, so how can we get our fashionable shoe website to appear in Google’s top 10 rankings? Well, we can try to optimize for the keyword “shoes” but I can guarantee that alone would be a tough task, as it’s far too general. We need to be more specific, which means:

1. Targeting a more suitable market that is looking for your type of shoes
2. Competing with fewer websites targeting the same keywords
3. Optimizing for keywords that people actually use when performing searches

Now there are a few ways to check how competitive your keyword phrases are, but keeping it simple, the easiest was to see how many sites you are competing with is to do a search on Google, and note down how many results are returned. The more sites that are competing for your keywords, the harder it will be to get on the front page. So sticking with our shoe retailer example:

Results 1 – 10 of about 56,100,000 for trendy women’s shoes. (0.25 seconds)

Results 1 – 10 of about 1,560,000 for fashionable women’s shoes. (0.29 seconds)

Results 1 – 10 of about 62,700 for fashionable women’s shoes Leeds. (0.28 seconds)

Get the drift?

Alternatively, to get a rough indication of how many people are actually searching for the keywords you want to optimize your site for, use the a keyword poularity tool. It’s not exact, and doesn’t measure Google searches, but it does give a very good estimate. You can also use Googles own Keywords finder. It will also provide you with a list of similar keywords, based on the keywords you enter. This can be a great way to find other keywords to optimize your site for.

Now you understand keywords you need to learn how to use them, so read on.

2. Website Content and Keyword Density

There is one thing that the pages at the top of google have in common and that’s good writing. Lots of content, which is well written and relevant to the website. It should not really be a surprise, as Google often stress the importance of good website content. However, most SEO “experts” or “specialists” never mention it, preferring to concentrate on the technicalities of SEO, like optimising title tags, page titles, alt tags, etc etc. You know, all that stuff that sounds really impressive in the report they offer you to improve your website, while at the same time confusing the heck out of you!

So what is well written content? What does google look for? Here are some suggestions:

• Frequently updated content, make sure you write new posts, articles, blogs at least once a week. Google likes to see pages and sites that are updated. How they see it, a dynamic site is more interesting to their users than a static site that has not been changed for months. Further, more content means more pages for Google to index, Google likes larger sites and each page can be written to target specified keyword phrases. Quite simply the more content you have out there, the more chance you have of being found.
• Spelling and grammar should have few or preferably no errors. Whether or not Google rewards or penalises poor spelling and grammar, it should be taken into account. Firstly, there is nothing more irritating to someone reading a web page than lots of mistakes. Secondly, no one really does know what the 100 factors in Google’s algorithm are, and it is entirely possible that spelling, at least, is part of their scoring system.
• Use Paragraphs, sentences and lists effectively in the page to emphasise the content and break up the text. Now this is more for readability, but again, who knows how Google judges content, and if they see a huge block of text without paragraphs for example, they may penalise the ranking because it would appear none user friendly.
• Keyword relevance within the text on the page. Numerous terms related to the keyword, as well as variations of the keyword. Make sure keywords or keyword phrases are used regularly, but not over used in the text on your page. As a human when writing for other humans we try to use variations of words to make the text more readable. When writing for search engine’s you should not substitute your keywords too much, even if it makes the text read better. There is a fine line between writing well for your users while also getting the most from your keyword density.
• Keyword Density is the last thing and most important thing to consider when writing your web page content. Think about your keywords and keyword phrases. Use the keyword(s) as frequently as possible without keyword spamming the page. Under ideal conditions, your article will have a keyword density rate of 5-7%. What this means is that 5-7 out of every 100 words in your article is your primary keyword/keyword phrase. The 5-7% is the keyword density. Now don’t take this as thinking you can spam your web pages with loads of the keywords. Firstly, this will ruin readability and annoy your potential customers, but secondly, Google will penalise this too. Yes they are aware of all the tricks of the trade! Further, make sure your opening paragraph includes your keywords preferably in the first sentence, as this tells the search engine that this is what the focus of your copy is about.

3. The URL and Title Bar

Two of the most determining factors in Google’s ranking are your domain name and title tag.

Sometimes there may be reasons not to include keywords in the domain name, or the domain name may already have been registered, so it’s too late to change. Well, the alternative, and also a useful tactic for everyone, is to add your keywords into the names of your pages.

Your title tag is equally as important as your domain name. The title bar is the blue bar right at the top of the browser shown below:

Using keywords in your title tag can improve your Google ranking significantly. Trying to achieve to a balance of professionalism with keyword density in the title tag however, is sometimes a little more difficult.

Now if your website is built on a CMS, (if you can update your website using an administration tool to add your own page content) then this CMS should be built so that you can affect your page titles. Most Content Management Systems do this automatically for you, by creating page title from the name of your page. In your CMS you will be asked to create a page title and this will show in the blue bar.So choose a title wisely.

Usually the CMS will also automatically add your domain name to the blue bar too. Further, if you categorise articles, then your CMS will more than likely add the category to the page title.

Google spiders like titles, it gives them a great idea about what the page is about. For example, in the image above, you can see the page title of one of may website pages; page title, article category and lastly the name of my website. It’s got lots of keywords in the title bar.

If your website developer, or whoever is responsabile for your website has not optimised this title bar then have a word, it’s very important!

Another little tip is, the closer to the front of your title tag the keywords are placed, the better. For a start some search engines can only read a few characters in this title bar and you don’t want to risk them cropping the tile and losing some of your keywords.

Keep the title fairly short and succinct.  Now many CMS’s actually put the domain name at the beginning of the title tag, this is all well and good if it includes good keywords, but if it doesn’t you may want to move your domain name to the end of the title tag.

4. H1 / Headings / Titles In Your Content

If you use a CMS and What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) Editor, headings in your system may be marked as “heading 1, heading 2, heading 3″ or “H1, H2, H3″. In HTML, the tag for headings is <H1> <H2> <H3>.  Headings along with the page title are extremely important in SEO. Once again it tells the search engine what your page is about. Text is in a heading on the page is deemed more important than the content by search engines. Search engins also rank the headings in order of importance too.

Here’s a quick example:

<h1>Google sees this text as more important</h1>
<h2>than this</h2>
<h3>and this is the least important title on the page.</h3>
<p>this paragraph is less important than the headings, but as it is the first paragraph, any content is more important than the next paragraph.</p>
<p>This paragraph text should have good keywords, but is not as classed as important as the first paragraph.</p>

5. Linking Strategies

This is the toughest part of the Google SEO process, back-links. Back links are websites that link directly to your website. Google loves back links. Each link from another site to yours is classed as a vote for your website. The simple reason is, if another site is linking to you then your content must be good, right?

The general principal is the more back links you have, the higher your pages will be ranked. Now how google classes back links is unknown, again we can only guess. It’s likely that back links from directory sites such as Freeindex and Yell don’t carry as much weight as those from non-directories. Again, if a website linking to you has similar content to yours, if it is about the same or a similar topic, it may carry more points. If a website that links to you is ranked high on google, it may give your site more of a ranking boost than a site that is ranked low.

It’s all common sense really, but either way, getting people to link to your site is a must, whilst remembering that the links must be quality links. Just getting anyone to link to you may actually do you more harm than good…….remember google is always looking for those who cheat and don’t take it likely.

Setting up back links takes time. I would recommend emailing 5-10 websites each and every day to request back-links or partnership links (keeping in mind that the sites contacted should be relevant but not competitive). Within a couple of weeks, you should have a good 100 or so sites happily linking back to yours! It may take time for this influence to be shown in your ranking, but I have found it is one of the best ways to raised your Google ranking!

Google can be one tough search engine to crack. Hopefully, however, in this article we’ve provided you with enough basic tips to get started optimizing your website. SEO takes time, anything you change can take as long as 6 months before google notices it. Be careful what you change and have a plan. If you are not doing any of the above tips, then get started, it will help.

In summary:

• Plan your keywords and keyword phrases, choose about 5 for each page on your website.
• Make sure the keywords and phrases are in the URL, page title, headings, first paragraph and evenly distributed throughout the text on the page.
• Regularly update your website with new content, write interesting articles for your customers and potential customers to find.
• Request links to your website from related but uncompetitive sites.

You may also like to read:

• What is Google Page Rank?
• Internal SEO
• Ever Regret Your Domain Name Choice?
• Do I need a keyword rich domain to do well in Google?
• What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?

Beginners Guide To SEO is a post from: Build Me A Fab Website

A web hosting service allows individuals and companies to provide their own website accessible on the Internet. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a web server they own, for use by their clients. Quite simply, you rent some space on a web hosts server, so that your site can be available on the internet for your target audience and potential clients or buyers.

Why do I need a web hosting service?

Well, if you want a website then it needs to be put somewhere where other people can see it. In essence, a simple website is made from a bunch of files; a web page is a file; a website is a file or a group of files stored on a computer, just like any other file you store on your computer at home. Only people who log onto your computer can access your files, so how do you share your files / web page with your audience? You use a web hosting service of course.

To be honest you could install and configure software on your own computer and then open that up to the whole world, but quite frankly it would not be worth the hassle dealing with the maintenance, the security, etc. Besides that, your computer would have to be left on at all times for your audience to get to your website! Now thats a lot of overhead costs and maintenance. This is why buying a web hosting service is the most reliable, cost effective solution for running a website.

A web hosting provider allows you to rent some space on a computer that specialises in serving files out across the internet to “host” your website pages for you. Simple eh!

Types of Web Hosting

Shared Web Hosting

For small businesses and individuals the most common type of hosting is shared web hosting, or web hosting using virtual servers. Shared web hosting is the most cost affective way to host your web site. The bonus of shared web hosting is small websites pool their resources and therefore lower the costs of running their websites, while getting great hardware to run their website.

Dedicated Web Hosting

Dedicated hosting is when you have a server and all it’s resources dedicated to your website alone. Very few websites receive enough traffic or use enough resources, or require a totally dedicated server for their needs. If you are hosting a site with high traffic, or if you need high security, or you expect you will need to have root access to the server and install your own software, change server configurations, etc, you will definitely need dedicated hosting. MOST small businesses DO NOT need dedicated hosting and can spare themselves the cost! If your website grows and your requirements change it is pretty simple to switch to dedicated web hosting.

Of course their are pros and cons of shared hosting when compared to a dedicated web server which can be read in our article shared versus dedicated web hosting. For now we will assume most people need little more than shared web hosting to meet their web site needs.

Choosing a web hosting service

When you begin looking for a web host you may find yourself overwhelmed with features and pricing. I mean how many people apart from the web experts would be able to figure out how much bandwidth your website may require, how much space your website will need, and if you need SSL. Even the experts have to take a guess at your requirements most of the time. When you are new to website building it’s difficult to decide what you need, as you’re probably not sure what most of the features list means anyway.

There are thousands of web hosting companies offering web hosting packages, so how do you choose one? Do you choose the cheapest? Do you choose the one with the most features? Do you choose the one with the best features? No! You should choose the one with the features that best suit your needs for the most affordable price.

As a rule of thumb I would say that if you don’t understand it then you probably don’t need it. There are so many companies out there to choose from and my recommendation is to make a list of what you need. Will you need a database and a secure connection to take payments? Is your site dynamic (ever changing) or static? Will you need an email account, a spam filter, create mailing lists? How much are SSL certificates with the hosting company? How much is a dedicated server with the hosting company? What are the features of the top package that company offers and how much does it cost? The list is endless. Look at the features and choose web hosting companies that suit your requirements.

Bare in mind you need to be able to grow quickly and without disruption to your service; in that case choose a web hosting service that allows you to upgrade the package seamlessly in the future.

The final step is to do some research, try to find independent reviews of those companies, baring in mind that many reviews sites are not independent and are affiliates of some of the web hosting companies therefore, reviews can be positively filtered!

One of the most important things you should bare in mind when choosing a web host is not only does that web host suit your needs now, but will it suit your needs in the future. It’s fine choosing a cheap web host now, but when your website grows, migrating to another host can cost time, money and expertise, and leave you wondering why you did not take a little more time to work out what you would require in the beginning.

How much should you be paying for your web hosting?

Well, that depends on your requirements? Web hosting is relatively inexpensive starting at as little as £35 per year (at the time of writing this article), making it affordable even for personal websites, and incredibly cheap for small business sites. However, you get what you pay for. If you choose a provider that gives you everything you need for a very low amount a year, you can’t complain if you get poor service. Generally speaking web hosting will cost between £40 – £120 a year. GOOD web hosting will GENERALLY be around £60 plus a year.

Website Hosting and Domain Names

Although it is not entirely necessary it is usually best and easier to buy your domain names from the web hosting company you choose or vice versa, especially as most web hosts provide a free domain name with the hosting package. Don’t make the mistake of going and snapping up your domain name in a hurry only to find you could have saved yourself a few quid buy holding out and researching a web host, many of which will give you a domain name for free!

Website Hosting Tips

Here are just a few things to think about if you are choosing a web hosting package:

• Choose a provider that easily allows you to upgrade a package without downtime.
• Go for a basic option and upgrade if you need to later.
• Look for a good guarantee and cancellation policy.
• It is best to register your domains with your web hosting company, so look at the price of domain registration too.
• Don’t be impressed by features you don’t need, you will either pay for them or your service will suffer for them.
• Linux hosting is usually the better and cheaper option.
• It is not necessary but it is preferable for your hosting provider to be in the same country that you are trading in.
• Identify if you will need a dedicated server, for example if you are hosting a website which will use a lot of bandwidth and server resource, you will more than likely need dedicated hosting.

I never said it would be easy Thats why FABI Designs have done the research for you. FABI Designs have trawled the INTERNET and tried and tested many hosting services, read many reviews and chosen what we feel to be a GREAT web hosting package for all of our clients. Feel free to call or email us for more information on 0113 2797731. You can also look at our web hosting packages on www.fabi-hosting.co.uk.

We hope this guide helps you on your web hosting search.You may also like to read:

• Shared versus Dedicated Web Hosting
• Explore the Benefits of Virtual Private Server Technology
• Is there a problem with “Unlimited Web Hosting”?
• Local Web Hosting is Expensive – Move Away
• Web Host Research – How to choose the right Web Host

A Guide to Web Hosting is a post from: Build Me A Fab Website

In Googles words:

“AdWords helps connect you with potential customers in the right place, and at precisely the right time by placing relevant ads on the right-hand-side of our search results pages.”

Google AdWords adverts are displayed along with search results when someone searches Google using one of your keywords/keyphrases. That way, you’ll be advertising to an audience that’s already interested in your business.

Try it now, go to Google and type “cheap gardening tools” into the search. You get a list of results, yes? The first thing you see are the sponsered listings in a faint shade of pink, there you are, that is Google Adwords. Below this pink box on the left side of the page there are the normal, non paid, known as “organic” search listings. To the right of the page you have some more “sponsered listings” or Google Adword advertisments.

Google Adwords is a Pay per Click (PPC) system which means that when someone clicks on the ad the advertiser is charged a fee, so be kind and only click if you are really interested in their product.

Unlike traditional PPC advertising where your ad position is based on how much you are prepared to pay. Google adwords reward relevant ads by increasing their position and for bad or irrelevant ads it decreases their position, and in some cases suspends them all together.

Google measures the ad popularity by monitoring how many people click on the ad (Click through rate). The more clicks the more popular and the higher the ad. With Google ads you don’t have to pay the most to get listed first! You need to provide the most relevant and popular ads.

It’s true that at the time of writing this article it’s one of the largest ad platforms available today! The question is should you be using it?

Google AdWords Advantages

Google AdWordsG aims to provide the most effective advertising available for businesses of any size. Their aim is to help you meet your customer acquisition needs by enabling you to:

• Reach people looking for your product or service
• Fully control your ad budget
• Easily create and edit your ads
• See your ads on Google within minutes of creating them

Google AdWords gives you 24/7 access to detailed performance reports that help you track the effectiveness of your ad campaigns. Google adwords comes with some nice features, and is fully customisable for any advertiser:

• Cost-per-click (CPC) pricing, so you pay only for the clicks you have received at a price you have set (choose a maximum CPC from £0.01 to £100).
• Cost-per-impression (CPM) pricing for those who prefer to target individual content sites and pay by the impression.
• Daily budget you set, starting from £0.01.
• Targeted ads you create and manage.
• Ad scheduling: run your ads on the days and hours you want.
• Online performance reports 24/7 in your account.
• Additional network of sites and products for increasing advertising exposure.
• One or multiple ads targeted with one or more keywords.

Google Adwords claims to be the best marketing tool for small to medium size businesses. But is it?

Why use Google Adwords

It is the quickest way of bringing highly targeted traffic to your website. It has many uses; you can use it to:

• Test a product
• Test a Sales letter
• Traffic source for very competitive niches when organic listings are too difficult
• Sell a product

You can quickly and easily bring targeted traffic to your website as it only costs £5 to register; and once registered you can start to using them straight away. They are easy to use and Google provides excellent help.

Are Google Adwords worth it?

Now I know that there are lots of people out there who are having great success with Google Adwords but I have to give a word of warning, your potential return on investment (ROI) can not be very high from the start. Why? Well, the time and effort required to make sure your campaign is returning suitable visitors to your site and not just ANY visitors to your site is actually quite high.

Google Adwords is not nearly as simple and easy as people seem to think. Unless you are in an extremely focused and highly targeted industry, if you simply bid on the popular keyword phrases for your business you will pay a lot of money and probably get visitors who are not targeted to your specific products and services. Your budget will run out pretty quickly and you may not see any custom back for it. So my point is, yes google adwords can be effective but only by spending time and effort on optimising your google adwords campaigns.

Take for example the keyword phrase “web design Leeds”, I would get the opportunity of 1500 hits per month with that at the time of writing this article, BUT I would pay £5.29 for each click through to my site and I am not guaranteed a sale! Think about that this way, I could use that budget to create a successful banner campaign on various websites where I may get more targetted hits.

The only way you will get value for money from google adwords is by spending time learning how to use it, (try the google adwords learning center) and researching keywords using keywords tool and then spending lots of time tweaking your campaign to suit your budget. Now thats a lot of time and effort and is what I mentioned earlier, a reduction in ROI. My Google Adwords Tutorial may help you too.

Google Adwords can pay off when you find highly targeted keyword phrases that you can get for low bid amounts but unless you are willing to devote a major chunk of time learning how to effectively run a Google Adwords campaign, or are willing to pay someone each month to manage your campaign, in most cases you will be throwing money away.

Like anything in life, you need to spend time learning, if you do you will reap the rewards but Google know most people don’t, and they sit back each month lapping up the money people throw away on adwords campaigns simply because they could not be bothered to invest a little of their time learning how to use thier system effectively.

For more help read our Google Adwords TutorialYou may also like to read:

• A Guide to Google Adwords
• Google Adwords Tutorial
• Google Analytics For Better Search Engine Marketing
• How to Promote a Website
• Internal SEO

A Guide to Google Adwords is a post from: Build Me A Fab Website