A Beginners Introduction: SEO Tool Tips & Techniques

<SPAN class=leadin>As we begin a new year it makes good sense to do a practical review of some important tips and widely used SEO tools. With that in mind, the following grab-bag of crucial points, guidelines and reminders should facilitate your ability to efficiently optimize web sites without wasting time or running afoul of the SE spam police.

Useful Keyword Research Tools

• For starters, o­ne of the more useful keyword tools is Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool available at: <SPAN class=smallverdanabold>http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

  When using it, be aware that it reduces plurals to the singular form of words. For example, a search for cars, will return the keyword car as well as the top keyphrases that contain the keyword car. And, the quantities given are for a combination of both cars and car.

  You should also be aware of the way Overture's keyword tool expands acronyms. For example when doing a search for NASCAR, the tool returns National Association for Stock Car Racing with 474,539 searches performed during a month's time <SPAN class=smallverdana>(in this case November '02). This is a dramatic example because (probably) 99.9% of those searches are actually for NASCAR.
  
  

• Position checkers and other automated bots will often skew the results o­n low frequency keywords searches within Overture and other similar search services. Don't make hard business decisions based o­n the numbers provided by these programs.

  For example, the term Mortgage Rate shows a count of 391,536 while Mortgage shows 407,342, a difference of o­nly 15,806 hits. When the quantities for a single keyword are this close to a multiple word phrase, there is an increased chance that a substantial number of queries for both phrases are being generated by automated bots.
  
  

• One of the most helpful, yet overlooked, resources are your own site's visitor logs. Here's where you should be looking to detect new keyword phrases and frequencies.

  Log statistics programs often have tools for generating reports regarding such information. And paid inclusion programs frequently offer search phrase reports that will detail exactly what keyword phrases were used to access your pages.
  
  

• Utilize AltaVista’s Prisma related search terms to discover new keywords.

  Notice that, when searching at AltaVista, a Refine your search with AltaVista Prisma section is shown at the top of the page. These phrases are based o­n recent searches conducted by visitors and represent yet another source for new keywords and phrases related to your offerings.
  
  

• WordTracker has long been a premier source for the intelligent assemblage of keyword information. If you haven't yet use the WordTracker service you are in for a pleasant surprise. Although they charge a fee, they make an otherwise tedious and difficult task easy, efficient, and complete.
  
  

Submission Tools

• Years ago engines like Infoseek would not add your web site until you submitted it, they rarely discovered new pages o­n their own. Today engines like Google, Fast, Inktomi and AltaVista tend to find and index pages o­n their own. In other words, there is no need to "submit" them provided that you create a link path to them from your main page(s).
  
  
• If you must have a page reindexed often or quickly, the most dependable method is to use the paid inclusion services that many engines like Inktomi, Fast and Teoma (Ask Jeeves) offer.
  
  
• There is no advantage to resubmitting your pages unless you have made some changes to it. Even then, most major engines will usually respider your updated pages and index the content within 30-90 days.
  
  
• The best use of an automated submission program today is to get listed in the hundreds of lesser engines and directories. Although the traffic coming from the myriad of lesser engines is minimal, it does help to be listed in them because, collectively, they tend to increase your sites' overall web presence. Although difficult to measure, being listed in the lesser engines adds a degree of significance to your site in general. This is clearly a case of "can't hurt but is likely to help".

  The best way to accomplish this is to use the submission features found within WebPosition Gold and Search Engine Commando <SPAN class=smallverdana>(which submits to 318 engines).

  Bear in mind that we continue to advise that you should manually submit to the major engines like Google, Fast and AltaVista – in other words, refrain from using the auto-submitters o­n the majors but go ahead and use them to submit to the lesser engines and directories.

Link Popularity & Keyword Density Tools

• It is important to remember that almost all engines rank pages based o­n a combination of on-page and off-page criteria. While newer tools like OptiLink do a good job of showing these combinations that cause pages to rank well, you can best gain insight into the on-page factors by doing controlled testing of pages.

  For example, to determine the ideal keyword density start by crafting pages that have exactly the same number and type of links. Then, by creating variations in the keyword density within the body text you'll be able to compare apples with apples. The test page with the best ranking, all other factors being the same, will reveal the better keyword density formula.

  FYI, the tool we use to measure keyword density is KDA

Page Generation Tools

• Optimization software that many people use to create pages is often detected and penalized by search engines. Therefore, we recommend that you do not use default templates that come with different software and server programs. Why? ...because o­nce several hundred people are all using the same tool these pages become easy to spot by a search engine – and easy to remove from their indices
  

  Therefore, (if you use them at all) it's wise to change default file names, image names and page layout structure to be safe. For example Google has been known to penalize sites that use the default file names supplied by the <A href="http://www.cyber-robotics.com/cgi-bin/creditgo.cgi?zeus@se-news.com" o­nmouseout="self.status=''; return true" o­nmouseover="self.status='http://www.cyber-robotics.com/index.htm'; return true">Zeus link building tool. So, to play it safe, you should build your own link pages based o­n the format these programs create but name them something other than what the default provides.
  
  

• You should also avoid software that creates pages based o­n templates that attempt to meet a specified keyword density criteria. This is especially true when the pages generated by such a program would be interpreted by people as senseless babble.

Using Tools Safely

• Avoid using the Google Toolbar when working with sensitive URLs that you don't want spidered.

  To do this you should either use a separate browser for sensitive URLs – we suggest Netscape or Opera – or else turn off the Advanced features within the Google Toolbar – particularly the <SPAN class=smallverdanabold>PageRank™ display. These are located under <SPAN class=smallverdanabold>Toolbar Options within the Google (pulldown) Toolbar menu.
  
  

• Use position checking tools, like WebPosition, o­nly when absolutely needed and during off peak hours if possible. Avoid accessing via static IP addresses because these are detectable and could be cause for an engine to block access. This is especially true regarding Google.
  
  
• Don't take a new developer's word that a product is not traceable by a search engine. Wait until those who are knowledgeable in such matters have reviewed and independently verified that the claims of the developer are true.

Food for thought,

John Heard - Research Specialist
Planet Ocean Communications