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I am a tech/marketing writer who has just been drafted into being the SEO guru at work. I was thrilled to find this site and I've been reading tutorials and indivdual threads. I have some pretty specific questions about density, and one about Alt tags, that I haven't found answers for yet in the Forums.
First a little explanation of what I'm trying to do: We have a client with a large retail website, lots of mail order business, and I'm picking up in the middle of what another SEO was doing (they got fired by the client recently.) We've purchased IBP and I haven't found it too difficult. I'm looking at logging analysis SW, but that's a little down the road. What I have is about 50 pages that need to be optimized. My questions are:
1. The previous SEO turned the title tag into just a list of the 3-5 keywords, rather than a description (well I guess it was sort of a description). Does it make any difference to SEs if the title is a phrase or a list?
2. I've already (based on what I've read here) whacked the stuffed Meta Keywords down to just the keywords in use on the page. Is there an ideal density for Meta keyword tags? How about Meta Descriptions?
3. We were told that 8-12% keyword density was a good range for body text, with 3-5 keyword phrases total. Does that sound about right to you all?
4. I am adding keyword phrases to all relevant Alt tags (pictures of products and subheadings that are images, but not spacers.) Is there an ideal density range within Alt tags?
5. The former SEO made a note that a particular Alt tag didn't need a keyword added to it "since it wasn't linked to another page." Does that make a difference when optimizing Alt tags, and if so, why?
6. If I optimize the Title, Meta and Alt tags and the Body Text, is there any other element I'm forgetting about?
Thanks, I'm grateful for any and all advice you can offer.
If I optimize the Title, Meta and Alt tags and the Body Text, is there any other element I'm forgetting about?
Inbound links... Link anchor text is very important, both on inbound and outbound links to a page.
Do not stuff the alt tags... they're for handicapped users. I don't think they'll help you much, if at all, in ranking. (There's recently been some discussion, though, that Google's text cache is showing image link alt tags as anchor text. It's not clear how much weight Google is giving these, but it's an interesting development.)
Meta keywords also are not going to help much. Google rewards text that is visible and prominent on the page. For more about meta keywords, take a look at the threads I link to in my post in this recent thread...
how many keywords
[webmasterworld.com...]
Here's a partial list of factors Google considers... there are probably a hundred...
Brett's quick rank point system
[webmasterworld.com...]
Search WW in Google for more on these topics. Good luck. You have lots of reading to do.
A lot of other things go into the mix, including the site architecture and internal navigation. Here's a quick run-down, which for convenience is broken down into different "areas" of effort
Google Optimization Basics [webmasterworld.com]
Some particularly pertains to Ink/Yahoo more than other elements, so in a sense it isn't just Google-oriented. Optimizing pages for (Inktomi) Yahoo and sites for Google is an approach I've always found to be helpful, since once a basic framework is in place it's then a logical process to fill in the details.
drop down mwnu in compact and discrete way to build up kw relevance
do your research on what competitors are searching for and how many (PPC websites have this info e.g. overture) - use this to write content and weave this in
people wil link to this because it is what they want
paul
