Critical-SEO - Part 2 - On Page SEO
How does it feel when your website drops from position 1 on Google, to position 1,000 overnight?
Can you imagine the impact that that would have on your business? From great success to literally nothing - overnight! Your income and livelihood gone!
That's what happened to many websites back in November 2003 when Google carried out a major update to their search relevancy algorithm. This update, which since became known as the Florida update, caught tens of thousands of website owners across the world by surprise.
Before the Florida update, most succesful websites were search keyword rich, using their most relevant keywords and keyword phrases heavily throughout their web pages in order to rank highly for those words.
As always, it doesn't take Google long to catch on to any techniques that were put in place simply to improve search engine rankings, rather than being there for enhanced user experience. In other words, Google perceived the over use of keywords as 'spammy' and penalized websites for over optimizing by dropping them way down the Google index.
This was a great move for enhancing user experience of websites, which is after all what the internet is about, but it still came as a big surprise for many website owners.
So where were they going wrong?
Google identified that keyword density is not an effective measure of the website's relevancy, so excessive repetition of keywords or phrases no longer became an effective SEO strategy. Use keywords too agressively and, guess what, you're moving DOWN in the rankings.
So the use of keywords is vital, but also the way you incorporate them into your web pages is just as critical.
It's important to mix up your keyword usage to seem as natural as possible. So for example, if your page title is 'Mercedes Specialists - Maintenance and Servicing' then perhaps your page title should be something like 'Specialising in all models of Mercedes cars'.
What's the difference you may ask? Well, there's a big difference in using your keywords in a varied and natural manner, rather than construction your sentences simply to contain the phrase 'Mercedes Specialists' over and over again. Google will recognize this as spamming and penalise you for it.
Remember, you can use singular and plural forms of your keywords, change the order of the keyword phrases, use synonyms and generally change words and phrases to appear more natural.
Of course, if you're constructing a genuine and useful website, this will come naturally as you put your words on the page.
Our SEO Report gets right down to the nitty gritty of the keywords on your website and will show you exactly where you are going wrong and where you are doing things right.
In the next part, we'll look at how Google makes it's decisions on who's going to be number one in it's index.
Happy SEOing!
How does it feel when your website drops from position 1 on Google, to position 1,000 overnight?
Can you imagine the impact that that would have on your business? From great success to literally nothing - overnight! Your income and livelihood gone!
That's what happened to many websites back in November 2003 when Google carried out a major update to their search relevancy algorithm. This update, which since became known as the Florida update, caught tens of thousands of website owners across the world by surprise.
Before the Florida update, most succesful websites were search keyword rich, using their most relevant keywords and keyword phrases heavily throughout their web pages in order to rank highly for those words.
As always, it doesn't take Google long to catch on to any techniques that were put in place simply to improve search engine rankings, rather than being there for enhanced user experience. In other words, Google perceived the over use of keywords as 'spammy' and penalized websites for over optimizing by dropping them way down the Google index.
This was a great move for enhancing user experience of websites, which is after all what the internet is about, but it still came as a big surprise for many website owners.
So where were they going wrong?
Google identified that keyword density is not an effective measure of the website's relevancy, so excessive repetition of keywords or phrases no longer became an effective SEO strategy. Use keywords too agressively and, guess what, you're moving DOWN in the rankings.
So the use of keywords is vital, but also the way you incorporate them into your web pages is just as critical.
It's important to mix up your keyword usage to seem as natural as possible. So for example, if your page title is 'Mercedes Specialists - Maintenance and Servicing' then perhaps your page title should be something like 'Specialising in all models of Mercedes cars'.
What's the difference you may ask? Well, there's a big difference in using your keywords in a varied and natural manner, rather than construction your sentences simply to contain the phrase 'Mercedes Specialists' over and over again. Google will recognize this as spamming and penalise you for it.
Remember, you can use singular and plural forms of your keywords, change the order of the keyword phrases, use synonyms and generally change words and phrases to appear more natural.
Of course, if you're constructing a genuine and useful website, this will come naturally as you put your words on the page.
Our SEO Report gets right down to the nitty gritty of the keywords on your website and will show you exactly where you are going wrong and where you are doing things right.
In the next part, we'll look at how Google makes it's decisions on who's going to be number one in it's index.
Happy SEOing!
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