SEO with different languages - a cultural fit

Who is your audience? If the answer to that is an international audience beyond the borders of the local area of delivery, then don’t forget it, as you need to consider the impact of reaching the masses!

Just by looking at your website tracking stats it should be clear whether you have an international flavour to your site visitors, so by going to ‘their level’ consider localisation factors in the way that international visitors may consider searching on our site.

They don’t watch our TV, they don’t listen to our radio, they don’t read the front page of our newspapers and they say potato when we say potatoe. Use the available language converters to check your main 3-5 keyword/phrases and consider using the results as part of your keyword group.

Language Resources:
http://www.freetranslation.com/
http://www.google.com.au/language_tools?hl=en

Does your domain name (Top Level Domain) say international (.com) or local (.com.au)?

Keyword Competition Analysis

Analysing your competition is an important step in the search engine optimisation process and it takes into consideration: what keywords your competition has chosen and how they use them on their website.

If you want to see who is your competition for the targeted keywords you've chosen then these tools will assist:

Competition Tool - SEO Digger
http://seodigger.com/

Competition Analysis Tool - Seoscorecard
http://www.seoscorecard.com/

Top Competitor Tool - Webuildpages
http://www.webuildpages.com/seo-tools/top-competitor-tool.php

Keyword Suggestion Resources

Keyword Suggestion Resources:

SEObook:
http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/

Wordtracker Free Keywords:
http://www.wordtracker.com/

Google AdWords Keyword Suggestion Tool:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Google Suggest Tool - shows frequently search for phrases starting with the words and letters in your query:
http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword-information/

Keyword Discovery - free keyword tool from Trellian:
http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html

Microsoft Keyword Forecast - shows predicted Microsoft search impression count and historical trends:
http://adlab.msn.com/Keyword-Forecast/default.aspx

Keyword Mutation Detection - Detect frequent misspellings or alternative spellings of the same keyword in search query logs:
http://adlab.msn.com/Keyword-Mutation-Detection/

Wordze - nice for generating decently large keyword lists quickly and inserting them into paid search campaigns:
http://www.wordze.com/

Metaspy - see what others are searching for currently
http://www.metaspy.com/info.metac.spy/metaspy/

7search.com keyword suggestion tool
http://conversion.7search.com/scripts/advertisertools/keywordsuggestion.aspx

Use KeywordPad to Clean, Modify & Multiply (Long Tail) Your Keyword Lists
http://www.goodkeywords.com/

Keyword Research Tool - Webmaster toolkit
http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/keyword-research-tool.shtml

Keyword Suggestions Overture - SEO Chat
http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-suggestions-overture/

Website Keyword Suggestions - Webconfs
http://www.webconfs.com/website-keyword-suggestions.php

Keyword Suggestion Tool - Self SEO
http://www.selfseo.com/keyword_suggestion_tool.php

Keyword Valuation Tools

Google Traffic Estimator - shows the estimated bids prices and ad clicks for the top ranked AdWords ad. Allows you to check for [exact match], "phrase match", or broad match.

https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox

SEO & Internet Marketing Google Gadget Tools

http://tools.seobook.com/google-gadgets/

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Search engine keyword position tools

When done correctly, search engine positioning can increase web traffic by a tremendous amount. Use these tools to check your current position of your keywords in major search engines like: Google, Yahoo, MSN:

Search Engine Keyword Position - SEO Chat
http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/search-engine-keyword-position/  

Keyword Analysis Tool - Mcdar
http://www.mcdar.net/KeywordTool/keywordtool.asp

SERPS Position Checker - LinkVendor
http://www.linkvendor.com/seo-tools/serps-position.html

Website Position Tool - Rnk1
http://www.rnk1.com/

Dictionary Resources:

Using Dictionaries & Thesaurus: Here’s a great starting point for you to consider variations on a theme – use the online Thesaurus to generate associated and similar words to your key focus words.

http://www.lexfn.com/

http://dictionary.reference.com/  

Keywords - plurals, singular, misspelt...

Consider the benefit of adding plurals and/or slight variations e.g. both Australia Australian. The vast majority of search results seem to focus upon returning results for the plural version of the word, instead of the singular version. Providing results that are singular or plural will provide more relevant results for a searcher than if the search engine had just returned results for the version that a searcher entered into a search box.

Also worth noting is where Google’s Algorithm highlights synonyms. Also the degree to which we understand synonyms changes and improves, and this can affect the impact on highlighting the terms. The main point is that the algorithm does change. Google mostly highlights stems, not synonyms, but the distinction is lost on most people. Stemming on Google isn't new. The company has been doing it since back in 2003. It was also highlighting stemmed words back then, too. If you searched for "running," and it found a page with the word "run," the word "run" would be bolded in the search listing description.

Consider using keywords that are misspelled or mistyped. With a business name or product name, consider how people may say it, or sound it out, and thus interpret the spelling of that word.

Do use a combination of very unique and more general words to describe the contents of your page.

Consider using keywords related to something else your prospect would buy or search for.(related phrases)

Once you have completed your brainstorming and have compiled your list of 5-10 core keywords, it’s time to move on and expand that list. A list of 5-10 search phrases will generally not bring the amount of search engine traffic needed to make your website successful. However, that list will be a vital tool when determining which phrases to add to the mix. At this point, you need to turn to the search engines themselves and research which search phrases are actually being typed into Google, Yahoo, Bing et al. While few search engines will openly tell you which search phrases are the most often searched, there are several very useful tools you can use to expand your list of keyword popularity.

Gone but not forgotten - Benefits of the Keyword Metatag

<keywords> Most search engines compare your meta keywords with what is actually on your page, and if it doesn't match, your web site can get penalized, and suffer in search results. Metatag keywords should have no more than 16 keywords. The limit is usually around 20-30 words. Maximum character length is actually 1000, but aim for less than 300, but really, given the negatives surrounding keywords, less is usually more.

Use plural variations (as the singular is included), comma space separate keywords, focus the design of the keywords around your primary 5 keywords and their variations... but again put the MOST important at the beginning of the list. Keyword PHRASES are important, and more realistic, as most people will search using 2 or 3 word combinations, rather than a single word!. Also determine keywords that searchers may use when looking for products or services that relate to your site. Use keywords that match the content within the page.

The Meta keywords were once the be all and end all of SEO. These days, the importance of the keyword tag has fallen drastically, as the ease with which it can be spammed has made it a less than perfect means for categorising pages. That said, Yahoo still uses the keywords tag, and as such it is still worth having, just not taking as much time over as was previously the case. In most cases, one keyword tag per site, or one per section, is usually more than adequate. The keywords tag should have terms separated by commas.

Keywords represent the key terms that someone might enter into a search engine. Choose only relevant keywords. If the terms are going to appear in your keywords tag, they must appear in the content of your site, or be a synonym to a term on your site. Most search engines compare your meta content with what is actually on your page, and if it doesn't match, your web site can get penalised, and suffer in search results.

The Keyword tag should include the keywords/phrases that you are targeting in order of importance. Start with the most important and then proceed to less important but still relevant keywords. It is extremely important that you do not repeat any word more than 3 times within the Keyword tag. This includes words within target sentences. Also do not place repeated keywords close together.

So even with the relative demise of this tag due to black hat spammy use, the benefits in a structural sense for organising your page and determining your focus should be enough to consider its use.

Increasing Keyword Density through bottom/footer links

Increase the navigational link opportunity throughout all pages across the website by creating a series of bottom footer tags.

Creating these visible hyperlinked text links on each webpage increases the user navigation whilst supplementing the website with high audience keywords that are being used in the pay per click advertising. For sites that may have been designed without an initial SEO focus, and have navigational elements embedded in Flash or scripts that leave a visiting search bot scratching its head as to how to follow and explore deeper into your site, this is an effective solution that provides usability and SEO rich features.

By developing bottom Footer Tags which are standardised across every webpage throughout the website. These hyper-text links are keywords that provide tunnels for search engine spiders, crawlers and robots to access every page on the website whilst adding to the keyword density of each page – without compromising the simple sign up functionality of the website that users are looking for. They can also be hidden behind a link and not exposed on the main pages – to avoid competitors detecting a search engine linking strategy.

With the constant modification of Search Engine algorithms, future algorithm updates may do away with all repetitive and similar looking links to websites. Therefore, it is important to create a range of links and not one standard link text. By doing this, the search engines are not likely to detect a pattern and this may assist in preserving your PageRank if the algorithms change.


Partly off-topic tip: Change the anchor text of a “more” link to the keyword the “more” page deals with!

Keyword Density in SEO on-page copy

Our goal - achieving 7% or more of Keyword Density per 250 words for each webpage.

Where possible, each web page should have high pay per click and high traffic keywords included into the body copy at a density level of approximately 7% for 250 words – which works out to being about 20 words. It is important that the keywords are contained on the first line of each paragraph. (Just like in school, the starting sentence of the paragraph grasps our attention, then unfolds through the rest of the paragraph as more is unveiled to support the idea being presented in the paragraph).

Use keyword density analysers to analyse the keyword density of keywords on your web site pages or measure the keyword density of your competitor's website to determine the optimum keyword density for your own keywords. The links provided below allow you to enter the URL and search word or phrase which you would like to run the keyword density analyser on (without quotes). The aim - is to have your focus 3/5 keywords-phrases appear predominantly in the results.

Keyword Density Analyser Resources:

Keyword density and word depth calculator
http://www.keyworddensity.com/

Webjectives Keyword Density Analyser Version 2.0
http://www.webjectives.com/keyword.htm

Keyword Density - SEO Chat
http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-density/

Keyword Density & Prominence - Ranks
http://www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.html

Analyse Keyword Density - Google rankings
http://googlerankings.com/ultimate_seo_tool.php

Keyword Density Checker - Webconfs
http://www.webconfs.com/keyword-density-checker.php

Keyword Density Analyser Tools - SEO Book
http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword-density/

http://www.keyworddensity.com
http://www.webjectives.com/keyword.htm

Image Naming Conventions

Ensure images that you save for a page have the keyword name in them.

Keywords for a page should be focused on a cluster of 5 keywords that map around the primary focus or goal of a page. Image search does bring people to our site, though it is realistically only a small figure, but part of branding exercises. So, for image naming conventions keep text lowercase, use underscores/hyphens to separate words, and put location based keywords or product based keywords into the name of the image.

The Design team should use user friendly readable names for content display images, and shortened names for design images.

For instance the name and file structure for an image that is the flag of France should be:

images/flags/flag-france.jpg

Whereas an image that is of the background for a div should be:

images/content/bg-div.gif

Unordered Lists

Dot points <ul> on the page are great, as these are accentuated words that you are highlighting, so again, try to use these in your page design, include your primary 5 keywords within these.

Make an unordered list which reflects the 3 most relevant topics of the page you’re tweaking and put it on top adding the words “this article deals with…”

Don’t use <br> to separate list items. Instead use the <ol> tag with <li> elements for ordered lists, and <ul> and <li> should be used for unordered lists.

SEO with Breadcrumb Navigation

Breadcrumb navigation shows the user's path to their current location, and should be located at the top of the page.

Breadcrumb navigation is wonderful for both usability and for SEO. This text-based navigation shows where in the site hierarchy the currently viewed web page is located and your location within the site, while providing shortcuts to instantly jump higher up the site hierarchy.

Example from Google's Webmaster section:

Google Help > Help Center Home > My site and Google > Creating a Google-friendly site > Working with AJAX-enhanced sites

If the breadcrumb contains text links with relevant keywords in the anchor text, that is a significant SEO benefit. The anchor text provides the search engines with an important, contextual clue as to the topic of the linked page. That equates to improved rankings.

One throwaway phrase that’s used almost universally within breadcrumbs is “home.” Try revising that link to something more search-optimal version of the anchor text with words like “computing” or “IT” or “technology” along with perhaps “store” or “products” that is site relevant.

You should also consider the amplifying effect of breadcrumb navigation. A link in the breadcrumb will be “voted for” more times if that linked page is higher up in the site hierarchy and if there are more pages underneath that page in the hierarchy. A supercategory page receives more internal links than a subcategory page. A category page covering hundreds of products will receive more internal links than one with only a dozen products in the category.

Breadcrumb Separator (for Horizontal Breadcrumbs)

Here is a summary of what designers tend to use as separators:

67% Right Arrow
10% Pipe
9% Colon
5% Slash
3% Left Arrow
3% Bullet
3% Text Treatment

Orientation of Breadcrumbs

95% Horizontal
5% Vertical

Heading Tags

In descending priority of importance, H ref tags should be used to group content on the page, and the titles need to include one or more of the primary focus 5 keywords within the title text.

Heading tags (<h1>, <h2>; etc) are given an additional boost in Search Engine rankings by search engines. The reason for this is that headings traditionally carry important information about the structure of a page. For this reason, it is preferable to use headings to mark important elements in a document and to utilise keywords within the heading tags:
<h1>
<h2>
<h3>

SEO for Page Headings

Page Headings need to contain keywords from the URL.

As search engines calculate the combined total of keywords on the webpage, it is important to ensure there is consistent use of the keywords in the page heading that are used in the URL. This provides a compound effect for search engines to increase the relevancy of the webpage which produces higher search engine rankings.

The following list summarises the important points for consideration:

1. Search engines generally ignore common words like "the", "a", "are", "is", "of", etc - your URLs will therefore do just fine without them.

2. Phrases like "How to do this" or "Which is the best" or "What are the options" or "When did this happen" make titles attractive but you need not put these words in the URL. For instance, the URL is "stop-junk-mail" for the article "How to Stop Junk Mail."

3. If something important doesn’t fit in the page title, put it in the URL. For instance, the URL of a page titled "Get your search fix with two videos" is like "free-search-seo-video" - so you have two new words ("free" and "seo") in the URL that were not in the title but do help in describing the underlying web page.

4. Use hyphens (or dashes) to separate keywords in URLs though Google can also read underscores.

Google probably assigns some fixed weight to your URLs which gets distributed across different words used in that URL. Now the weight per keyword will obviously dilute when you have long URLs.

Therefore, it will help if you can manually create URLs with lesser number of keywords but they should also be relevant to the context of your content. It requires a little extra effort at the time of writing your blog post but they may reap good benefits in the long run.

Keywords in URLS - Information Architecture

I suggest the inclusion of high audience and pay per click keywords into the naming convention (referred to as the nomenclature) within the website. Aim to include real search phrases as part of a page’s URL structure.

Search engines like Google and Yahoo directly match keywords typed in by users and return relevant URLs in the search engine results. URLs which have keywords which match those typed into the search engine typically are returned in priority.

The Keyword Information Architecture approach has proven to increase search engine indexation for an entire website.

Methodology:


Add keywords to the URLs throughout the website according to keywords that are either:

1. High Price and Converting Keywords purchased on search engines such as Google.com
2. Keywords which refer users to the client website that lead to high time spent viewing
3. Keywords competitors are optimizing on
4. Keywords that result in qualified leads and closed orders from lead sources

Implementation:

The rationale for having keywords twice in the URL is to ensure search engines recognize this URL is more heavily weighted to these keywords and ensure higher search engine rankings.

Here is an example of how SearchForecast implemented keywords in TuVox Inc website.

The following list of keyword phrases are sourced from Google.com

Keywords Estimated Avg. CPC
hosted IVR $15.01
IVR $12.43
VoiceXML $7.82
speech recognition software $5.40
Speech recognition $5.38
VXML $3.75
Source: Google.com

These keywords are then threaded into the URLs as below:

Products

On Demand Speech Apps
Former URL: http://www.tuvox.com/prod_ondemand.html
New URL: http://www.tuvox.com/ivr_solutions/ivr_speech_recognition/VoiceXML_VXML.html

Call Routing
Former URL: http://www.tuvox.com/prod_apps_routing.html
New URL: http://www.tuvox.com/ivr_solutions/ivr_speech_recognition/voice_self_service/call_routing.html

Where possible use relevant high yielding keywords when building descriptive URL’s.

It’s also important to not make URL’s too long – keep them to fewer than 1024 characters. Use the home pages, or main category pages to target primary, most competitive keywords. These have the best chance or ranking highly