Search Engine Optimization Course for Newbies - Part 2
This Section of the SEO, Search Engine Optimization Course covers FTP
from your on personal PC to your Internet Hosting Server it also gives
a short overview of SEO, Search Engine Optimization, and talks about
finding key phrases to match your Internet Web Sites Content.
7.
Let now click on the options and set the FTP program up so it knows to
use Notepad as your default text editor. At the bottom of the ftp
screen there is a button called OPTIONS click on that. The where it
says TEXT VIEWER Click the BROWSE button and browse to your Notepad
program. Mine is located at C:\Program Files\Windows
NT\Accessories\notepad.exe Yours should be in a similar location. You
don?? need to enter your email address there in that blank but you can
if you want to. For our purposes it will not matter either way. NEXT
while this screen is open Click on the REMOVE FINISHED REQUESTS FROM
TRANSFER BUTTON.
WOW we should be ready now to actually take a
look at your main page. Although your page may be named default.html or
index.php or index.htm I am going to use the most common one for my
examples here and call it index.html Make sure when you edit your page
that you
use the same name it was originally called.
The
next step is to copy the index.html page from the hosting server to
your local hard drive so you can edit it. To do this make sure you are
connected to the server and have
found the correct page. Then click on the MkDir option on the left side of your WS-FTP screen.
This
will create a new directory on your local hard drive where we can store
the files we are going to edit. I call mine WORKING but you can call it
anything you like just remember what you named it and where it is
located so you can find it again. When this directory is created click
again on the OPTIONS button below and then click on the SAVE CURRENT
FOLDERS AS CURRENT CONNECTION. This will allow the program to go
directly to the directory on your Hosting server and your working
directory the next time you log on.
In the center of the screen
you will see 2 arrows and what looks like a typed page below them.
Click on the page a couple times and stop when it says either ASCII or
AUTO. There is a 3rd option you will see as you click called binary,
this is used to transfer pictures and other binary files but you should
always use the ASCII option to transfer pages.
So now highlight the index.html file on the right side of the screen and click on the
arrow pointing LEFT at your hard drive. The program will then copy that file to your hard
drive. It is now ready to edit.
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??????Short Overview of Search Engine Optimization ??????
======================
There
are many considerations to go over when you are getting ready to
optimize your pages for the search engines. There is a balance here
between getting high rankings on the engines and actually attracting
that visitor to come to your Web Site. Just because you show up high
doesn?? mean the person doing the search will actually click on that
result or pass you over for one more interesting. Keep that in mind
while I explain what the most important parts of getting ranked high in
the search engines.
First we need to ask ourselves what people
would type into a search engine to find your site. Sometimes that is
really simple. Lets say you are a dealer for XYZ Lawnmowers in
Pittsburgh PA the most sales would most likely come from someone
looking for the brand on lawnmower you sell. So the most important
phrase would be XYZ Lawnmower Pittsburgh PA. The hard part comes in
when you want to cover an entire county or the world. Using Pittsburgh
as an example you may want to use Allegheny County or the suburbs of
the city like Shady Side or Oakland or many other areas close to you.
This isn?? feasible to do with just one page. So keep in mind you can
create more pages within your site so you have one for each location or
even one for each product and location. Don?? get too carried away,
because even with just xyz lawnmowers and each zip code in the country
you are talking about roughly 77,000 pages. This will actually hurt you
with some search engines unless you make the content totally different
on each page. So for now lets just deal with your main page and call
your main phrase XYZ Lawnmowers Pittsburgh PA
Please give a lot
of thought to your phrase. If it is too narrow it?? pretty easy to get
a high ranking but the downside is you may only have 3 people type that
into a search engine in a month. If it is too broad lets say like the
word Lawnmower on its own it may get you 10,000 hits but they aren??
going to make you any sales if they are from Poland. So think about
your product and your market and then come up with your main phrase.
Once
you have this phrase in mind you will also want to think about getting
links back to your site. The search engines look at links to your site
from other sites and basically give you credit for having a link from
another site pointed at your web page. It is like a vote of confidence,
if 40 other webmasters think your site is important enough to give you
a link then you must have a pretty good site. Also the more similar the
site linking to you is, the more value the search engine will give to
that link. A step further to this is that the more important that site
is the higher the ranking the search engine will assign to you. So
links from Ebay or Yahoo are much more valuable then a link from your
buddy George?? personal home page on AOL. Although let George link to
you. It is definitely not going to hurt you at all.
We will get
more in depth about links later on but for now just remember that, for
the most part people who link to you help your sites rankings. So the
more links pointing at you the better.
If you use the correct
phrase, have a lot of links back to your site and your web pages
optimized you have the battle half won. A good place to look for key
phrases and to see related phrases is at word tracker located at:
http://our.affiliatetracking.net/wordtracker/a/17568
While
you are there copy down any related key words that seem important to
you and make a list of these and any other key words you think would be
relevant to your site. Try and keep it to about 25 words at the max and
about 8 at the minimum.
Please check out my Ebay Store for Search Engine Optimization