A Basic Introduction to Search Engines
Commanding Influence: Build A Strong Online Presence
One of the most popular means for getting visitors to your website is through search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL or others.
How is it that we can take advantage of people’s ability to Google for something in order to get them to our site. The answer is simple. We need to get our keywords to rank high in the popular search engines. Today I’m going to teach you what a keyword is and how to start convincing Google to list your site for your desired keywords.
What is a keyword?
I know that this concept sounds extremely complicated so let’s step back for a moment and bring it down to the easiest possible level.
A keyword is anything that an internet user might search for. A keyword can actually consist of more than one word in this sense.
Here are a few examples of search entries separated by commas: Blog Tips, How to Blog, Facebook, Blogging. Notice that two of the keywords were individual words and two of them consisted of more than one word.
What keywords do I want?
In order to get users to visit our websites, we need to get our site listed near the top of the listings for keywords that are relevant to our sites.
In other words, if you run a website that deals with dog shelters and adoption in Baltimore, then you would ideally like your website to appear in the top 10 listings on Google when a user searches the keyword “Baltimore Dog Shelters.”
A user who searches for “Baltimore Dog Shelters” on Google is probably looking for a site just like yours. So if we can get your site listed at the top of the search engine’s listings for that keyword, we can gain a visitor who is legitimately interested in the information on your site.
How do I check my current keyword rank?
Here’s a great website where you can check your website ranking in the most popular search engines: Mike’s Marketing Tools. Click over to Mike’s Marketing Tools, scroll down the page until you see “Submission Form” and enter your website information. Enter your website address in the “url” field and enter a keyword in the “keyword” field.
For example: I entered “http://www.sitesketch101.com” for the url and How to Blog for the keyword to find out how Site Sketch 101 would be listed if a user searches for How to Blog.
According to Mike’s Marketing Tools, Site Sketch 101 is the 67th listing on Google for the search phrase how to blog. So if you were to go to Google.com and search the phrase how to blog then you should find Site Sketch 101 as the 67th listing. Since Site Sketch 101 is a website dedicated to teaching people how to blog this should be able to attract visitors who are genuinely interested in my site.
How do I improve my keyword rank?
Google has some pretty advanced programming that determines how our sites are listed but the bottom line is that Google is looking to find the best possible content to list near the top of their listings for each keyword. Although there are literally dozens of items that influence your rank, let’s look at the two most powerful factors.
- Inbound Links. If another website links to your website using your desired keyword phrase then Google counts that as a vote towards your online credibility for that phrase. So if someone hyperlinks the phrase how to blog, then Google will add weight to the listing for Site Sketch 101 and this site will continue moving up the ranks toward the top ten. Here are a few examples of links that will help to improve your keyword listings: how to blog, Sikat Ang Pinoy & lifestyle design.
- Content. Google scans each page and examines the content to determine which keywords they should be listed for. It’s important to make a conscious effort to include a strong keyword two or three times throughout an article. Include it in the title. Make it bold by wrapping it in strong tags. Remember though that as you do this it can overdone and can actually become a nuisance to your readers. Strike up a great balance and grow your search engine listings.
Group Discussion
Hopefully this quick overview gives you a better understanding of what keyword ranking means in terms of search engines and hopefully you have some new ideas for improving your listings. If you have questions about any of these concepts, don’t hesitate to leave some comments!
What keywords are you trying to get your sites listed for? What is your current rank? What are you actively doing to get Google, Yahoo and other search engines to find your website?
Sarge | BeginnerBlogger.com said:
Great beginner guide to keywords and search engines Nicholas!
Bookmarked and will share with my readers. Perfect
Learned quite a few things myself.
Before I even knew what SEO was all about I purchased my domain of beginnerblogger.com (this was over 2 years ago) At the time I was surprised no-one had scooped it up, so I bought it.
Turns out not many people search ‘beginner blogger’ at all but I think it’s a pretty good domain name as I get a lot of direct links to my blog – so people are just typing in ‘beginnerblogger.com’ so it’s really helpful.
I reckon if I didn’t buy it then 2+ years ago it would almost certainly be picked up by today so I’m glad I bought it then.
I still need to do a lot of keyword research to try and target other keywords that I feel I can rank well on and still be relevant to the content I provide on my site.
Great post!
Sarge | BeginnerBlogger.com
My Latest Blog Post: How To Keep Yourself Under Pressure and Perform With Your Blog?
King Sidharth said:
Hey Sarge,
Just saw your blog. It’s nice to be there! Though design can do a bit better.
You are lucky to have that domain name. It contains keyword. ‘Blog’ so cheers!
Anyways, Offsite SEO matters a lot. SO go get back links with keywords ‘start to blog’ or something.
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Sarge | BeginnerBlogger.com said:
Thanks for checking out my blog, King.
I know there is improvement for design. Apart from a couple of things, I haven’t put much effort into the ‘design’ of it yet, almost deliberately as I’m still working out the usability of my site for the future.
My Latest Blog Post: How To Keep Yourself Under Pressure and Perform With Your Blog?
King Sidharth in Meditation said:
Ur welcome dude!
I know you will have a great design soo. Anyways, Let me know if you need any help. Check out my site and let me know if you like it (Contact Form )
Blake @ Props Blog Reviews said:
I think it’s worth it to work on design and usability at the at the same time. Otherwise, you’ll get a site that is user friendly, but people don’t stay on.
I checked out your site as well, and I don’t think the design is bad. Two usability things I noticed where:
I didn’t notice anything showing recent post (although I did see popular). It is certainly open to debate, but I’ve always thought having both is worth while.
The second was I think popular posts is too far down on your page. I read an article on Smashing that said that the majority of users don’t scroll. The closer to the top your best content is, the more likely you are to keep readers on your page.
p.s. I really like the sticky featured articles though. I guess that makes up for it
Keep up the good work!
My Latest Blog Post: Two Quick Visual Branding Tools You Should Already Be Using
Nicholas Cardot said:
Sarge | BeginnerBlogger.com –> You’re probably right. That name would probably be long gone by now. Great job on picking that name up. Now make sure that your providing amazing content so that when people do happen to stumble upon your website they’ll become regular visitors.
King Sidharth in Meditation said:
Yea Nick, this one is awesome post! And thanks for sharing keyword tool. It’s very very helpful.
I knew the basics and now I am ranking 2nd in google and AOL for ‘Meditation Rocks’ and 1st on Bing, Yahoo.
I don’t know how but as soon as I made my blog a ‘dofollow’ one. It started getting higher ranks. XD
Nicholas Cardot said:
King Sidharth in Meditation –> Good. I’m glad to hear that. I know that it’s helped me out a lot also in determining where I’m at for keywords.
Deepika said:
Hi nick,
This is useful for beginners. Keywords plays important role. The Mike’s Marketing Tools you have mentioned is really helpful. Each post of yours blog looking awesome..
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Nicholas Cardot said:
Deepika –> Thanks so much. I sure appreciate the validation and the site praise you provide. I’m grateful to you. I’m also very excited that this resource is helpful to you. Let me know if you have any questions.
Deepika said:
Hi Nick,,
I am surprised with your awesome character of replying each commentator with patience. Thats a good one nick.. I am always eager to read your upcoming articles.
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Nicholas Cardot said:
Deepika –> I like to think of this place as a conversation. It brings me great joy to respond and speak to every person who’s willing to connect with me.
chandan said:
This is one nice introduction for beginner. Keyword is very much important for rank on search engine. I think now a days search engines are going smart and they evaluate all things before they rank any page.
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Nicholas Cardot said:
chandan –> Thanks. I think a lot of people start out without knowing too much about keywords. I remember how clueless I was when I was first starting out in this line of work and so I thought that it would be great to try to simplify things a little bit for everyone.
Ron Leyba said:
Thanks for the ranking checker tool Nick. As of now, there is no doubt that link building is the greatest thing we should do to get higher rankings. There are so many ways to do this and I know, anytime soon, you will cover those link building types and details at SS101. Thanks again!
My Latest Blog Post: Sikat Ang Pinoy
Nicholas Cardot said:
Ron Leyba –> Actually, I’m working on putting together a video to teach one of the most powerful aspects of gaining inbound links. I actually think that a lot of people are looking in the wrong places for their inbound links.
Robomaster @ CoolAppSite said:
Can’t wait for it! This has been one of the hardest areas for me in blogging – Some people say just write and promote, and links will come, and others say to comment on dofollow blogs, and still more others say to ask for links.
I can’t wait to see what you think is the best way!
My Latest Blog Post: 10 Things I Hate About Google
Antti Kokkonen said:
I’m targetting “long-tail” keyword phrases on my blog. Meaning lower search volume but lower competition as well. In short, long-tail keywords means taking some popular keyword or keyword phrase and making it more precise, usually longer, until you find the balance between “enough potential traffic” and “not too much competition” for that phrase.
With keywords like this, it’s easier to rank higher in the search results, the traffic is smaller, but still higher than page 97 (or not ranking at all) for a higher competition keywords. Ranking high for competitive keyword phrases is a long term process, so using related, long-tail keywords is a great way to start building little bits of traffic for each post.
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Nicholas Cardot said:
Antti Kokkonen –> Those are powerful and since you brought that topic up, I think that I’ll write an article about that so that people can understand the pros and cons of targeting long-tail keywords versus the mainstream keywords. That’s actually a terrific strategy for small blogs looking to start building their exposure.
Ron Leyba said:
That’s a wise decision on your part. It pays to start always at low, low competition and low searches. It was easier to rank with those higher competition phrase if you are already ranking fairly high on long tail keyphrase.
Also, long tail keywords converts much better as per my experience.
My Latest Blog Post: Sikat Ang Pinoy
David | ilcantone.com said:
Great article Nick,
I think SEO is crucial for getting traffic. I don’t know too much about this topic.
Great tool: Mike’s Marketing Tools- I didn’t know about it. I’ve been using it and it’s a really useful tool to investigate what is working on other blogs. For example, Steve Pavlina is ranked the first blog on Personal Development. He deserves this rank because his content is awesome.
See you Nick.
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Nicholas Cardot said:
David | ilcantone.com –> SEO really is crucial and you’re not alone in not knowing a lot about the topic. It’s a difficult subject to really grasp a hold of. There’s a lot of things out there that really don’t work. I’ll work hard to make it as simple as possible.
Robomaster @ CoolAppSite said:
Yet another great post! I don’t have nearly as many high-PR backlinks as I should like, but hey, my blog’s two weeks old. I’m already ranking on the top 10 on google for keywords like “best freeware ever” and “cool web apps.”
Don’t believe me? Google those keywords away, I just checked them and I’m on #6 and #3, respectively.
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Nicholas Cardot said:
Robomaster @ CoolAppSite –> That’s terrific to be listed that well on keywords like that. It can take a long time to gain strong keyword listings like you’ve gained in only a very short time.
Blake @ Props Blog Reviews said:
Nick,
As always great content. A lot of people make out SEO to be more complicated than it really is.
The fact is, writing quality content worth linking to will get you inbound links and help your SEO more than any of the other crazy methods people use.
There are two other things that I’ve found have helped my search engine rank.
1) Using header tags. Google seems to place higher value on text tagged as headers.
2) Labeling images. Ironically, I rank #1 for a handful of random search terms for the IMAGE. Believe it or not, I end up getting a pretty decent amount of search traffic from image searches. It’s underrated.
Check them out. Again, great stuff Nick
My Latest Blog Post: Two Quick Visual Branding Tools You Should Already Be Using
Robomaster @ CoolAppSite said:
That’s something I never quite got – it’d be nice to see your traffic counter up with traffic from Google Images, but most people are going to the site for the image itself, and won’t even bother reading the article.
It’s good to use ‘alt,’ but other than that is it really worth image optimizing all your photos?
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Nicholas Cardot said:
Robomaster @ CoolAppSite –> I think that sometimes people blindly chase traffic. Traffic is only useful if it’s people that actually want to view and engage with our material. What’s the point of have 100 bounces per day?
Nicholas Cardot said:
Blake @ Props Blog Reviews –> I think that a lot of people focus too much on SEO and end up trying to essentially spam the search engines without even knowing it. I think it’s important to optimize just as you’ve said but I also think that it’s incredibly important that we still write our content for real people.
Alan @ Basin Glass Pipes said:
Very cool beginner’s guide. People should be careful to have inbound links from quality/reliable sources, preferably from a higher PR website.
Blog Guide said:
Some people argue that you should not worry too much about the inbound links you get. I mean that even if you get backlinks from not a very reliable source you may be well off.
The bigger issues is that you should not yourself link to bad sites. Google frowns more on you linking to a bad site than a bad site linking to your site.
Like you say, the higher the pagerank the better are the links valued.
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Sarge | BeginnerBlogger.com said:
Is this entirely true? Extreme John (http://www.extremejohn.com/) has a pagerank of 4 and is well known for having DO follow links in his comments.
Therefore anyone with any ol’ website can get a link from John’s blog, yet it doesn’t seem to be affecting his page rank at all.
Also, by a ‘bad’ website are you referring to a site with a low page rank?
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Blog Guide said:
By a bad site I mean sites that have been banned form google, have duplicate content and similar sites. Having a dofollow blog does not constitute in linking to bad sites, because you can moderate the links that people have in their comments.
Hope this clears things out. Feel free to ask more if you have any further questions.
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Nicholas Cardot said:
Blog Guide –> That’s exactly right. I had someone here for a little while that was posting great comments but the links they were leaving in the ‘website’ field were filled with links to pornographic websites. As much as I valued his comments, I wasn’t going to have links from this site to those types of sites so I deleted them quickly.
We get to control the outbound links even in our comments sections.
Sarge | BeginnerBlogger.com said:
Thanks for clearing that up! I actually thought my blog had dofollow links by default (I never turned anything to nofollow and thought it was something people did themselves so they didn’t give out ‘link juice’)
I will endeavor to make my blog dofollow as I don’t really see the point of not doing so.
I’m here to help not hinder!
Sarge | BeginnerBlogger.com
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Nicholas Cardot said:
Blog Guide –> I’ve heard that as well, but remember that Google doesn’t release their algorithms to the public. People are just guessing and sharing what seems to work best for them. The bottom line is that we need to create awesome content and Google will list us.
Nicholas Cardot said:
Alan @ Basin Glass Pipes –> That’s true. Not all links are created equal.
Blog Guide said:
I have been using SEO for years on my sites before this time and to be honest it takes a lot of time. There is no quick way to get massive amount of inbound links with good keywords.
A few years ago even directory submissions worked quite well. Unfortunately it does not work that well anymore.
The best way to do some SEO nowadays is to write link bait and hope that people will pick it up along the way. Keeping writing good articles will eventually get you baclinks and somekind of success. Everyone just keep at it and you will succeeds.
My Latest Blog Post: Writer’s Mindset – Think and Write Better
Nicholas Cardot said:
Blog Guide –> I still contend that the best way to build inbound links is to offer an amazing website and build relationships with other bloggers.
Gonzo the Great said:
Hi Nick,
great article, only a comment on the keyword-tool you use.
The ‘problem’ with ‘Mikey’s Tool’ is that this tools only looks in the indexed pages of Google for your keyword/s.
If you want to test the keyword-density (what should be between 2-5%) of your newly uploaded page, a page that can’t be indexed yet by Google, try:
meta-tag analyser.
Go to “Keywords found on page: Keyword – Times Found – Keyword Density”, there you’ll find the keywords with the best density.
Now you can play with your keywords and their density, without waiting on Google to first index your page or the total site.
I’m not saying that ‘mikey’s tool’ is rubbish, it’s a great tool when you’re sure that (all) your pages are indexed.
Cheers & Ciao …
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King Sidharth in Meditation said:
Wow! Just used it, it’s awesome!!
Thanks for sharing this valuable resource.
Nicholas Cardot said:
King Sidharth in Meditation –> You’re welcome. I’m glad that you find it useful.
Ron Leyba said:
Does the keyword density a huge factor.? I mean, I really ignore it. Don’t get me wrong on this one buddy. But in my point of view, as long as you delivered well the article with the proper keyword usage, keyword density wont be a factor on it. Right?
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Nicholas Cardot said:
Ron Leyba –> The bottom line is to produce amazing content. Keyword density does factor in a little bit, but the designers of Google now realize that some of the excellent websites out there aren’t necessarily the ones that have the ideal keyword densities. Some of them are simply producing amazing content and Google is working to pick up on that based on backlinks and many other factors.
Andrew said:
Guys, sorry to burst your bubble bit keyword density just doesn’t exist anymore.
There is no magic number or percentage to shoot for. Aside from the testing that the guru’s have already done, I’ve also done a bit of testing on this one.
The fact is that I’ve managed to get pages ranked for specific keywords without those words appearing anywhere on the page or only having one or two instance of it on he page.
I’ve explained a lot of this in my posts here on SEO Tips, as well as on my own blog. In fact I’ve written a bit of content there, some a bit techy, that dispels a lot of these types of myths and provides explanations as well.
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Nicholas Cardot said:
Andrew –> I would argue that it matters some but not much. If the keyword didn’t exist on the page at all then Google would have no idea what the page is about. But of course, we also know that Google doesn’t release it’s algorithm so we don’t know exactly what works. We can only try and learn from others’ best practices.
Andrew said:
Wow I can’t believe I didn’t notice this in my inbox.
Anyway to address what you are saying; the algorithm may not be public knowledge but with adequate testing we can safely determine certain things.
For example, it was through testing (as opposed to a published document from Google) that meta tags dramatically lost influence just a few short years back, yet only a couple of years before that they were highly valued. Google didn’t publish this, rather we worked it out through testing various scenarios.
So back to the question at hand on keyword density. As I mentioned in the previous comment, during a test, I wanted to try to rank a particular page using the targeted keyword only once, and that was in the title.
The page ranked, and ranked well. The question was then – Why? Through more testing the answer became very obvious.
The page content! I’m not talking about LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing). No one even knows if it actually does exist, but what we do know is that the algorithm is clever enough these days to assess the surrounding text, picking out individual words, combining phrases as they appear, and comparing those to other pages with similar content (excluding any specific keywords or terms).
As you’ve explained here, and I have explained both here (in guest posts) and on my own blog, keyword density is a pure myth and in fact trying to achieve a magic percentage may cause you more problems due to over optimizing.
The ability to rank a page for a particular keyword actually has less to do with specific keywords or density and more to do with page content, site authority and quality inbound links.
Personally, I do still like to get the keyword into the content no more than 3 times. Usually in the title, I’ll try to work it into the description, and have one instance of it in the content.
But clearly when a page can rank without the keyword even appearing in the page, then the idea of keyword density just got totally owned.
If anything, when targeting keyword, you could better spend your time trying to ensure the best use of anchor text just as you did with your post recently about ‘how to blog’. You’ll get far more results from that than any number of keywords that you try to squeeze into a post.
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scheng1 said:
Actually with Google Adsense, it’s quite easy to see whether we use keywords correctly.
Once a writer in Associated Content wrote about disciplining children. She described the naughty children running here and there, and the Google Ad displayed running shoes!
I guess she let “running” overshadowed the theme of the whole article.
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Nicholas Cardot said:
scheng1 –> Yes. I have a few articles like that.
Davor Gasparevic said:
A core of the SEO knowledge, nice post.
Pity that I didn’t visit this blog sooner.
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Nicholas Cardot said:
Davor Gasparevic –> It is a pity. I’m thankful for being able to connect with you on here and I hope that you’ll let me know if you have any questions or if you need anything.
Davor Gasparevic said:
Of course I will, I already have dozens of blogs that I comment on and find useful tips and advices, which I try to utilize later.
Nicholas Cardot said:
Davor Gasparevic –> Thanks, friend. I look forward to connecting with you more as we continue to grow together.
ecommerce software said:
Useful post, thanks for sharing those useful resources, i always like a post on how to improve my efforts. I know the struggle continues, we keep getting related links and adding useful content probably will see great results soon cos i know SEO result is long term project….
Nicholas Cardot said:
ecommerce software –> It really takes a LOT of backlinks and activity to get you listed near the top of hot topic keywords. You should visit the top 10 sites for the keyword that you want to rank for and study their efforts to see how you can step it up and beat them.
Anthony V. Gibby said:
I swear this is the most important blog post I have read. I had on my task list to learn what are keywords & and how to use them. This really have reduced the amount I need to learn now.
Anthony V. Gibby said:
I had to come back and comment on this post. I went to Mike’s Marketing Tools and everything I did a search on for any of my sites, it came back as a “No”. Meaning I was not listed in the top 100 for any keyword tested. Well I was for one – my own name “Anthony Gibby”. I have a lot of work ahead me. But this post and link gives me a starting point.
Olusegun Adedokun said:
Thanks man.
a quick question here:
How do i efficiently link posts and how do i do trackbacks?
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Nicholas Cardot said:
Olusegun Adedokun » After you write an article browse back through it and look for any phrases whose topics have been covered by other articles on your site or on sites that you have read recently. Here’s an example by Jordan Cooper of doing this very thing. Notice that he even links to Site Sketch 101 for the phrase get traffic.
http://notaproblog.com/content-copywriting/article-a-day-helps-you-work-rest-play/
Rose said:
It’s important to choose the right keywords. A number of bloggers-myself included have found our-self ranking for irrelevant keywords. Wordtracker is a useful tool.
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Kok Siong Chen said:
I used to do the keyword research by using the Google Keyword Tools.
I have a question. Is it necessary to do the keyword research for every article in my blog? I always do this.
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James Milne said:
Nick, I can’t thank you enough for everything you teach here. There’s no other place I need to look when I’m lost on something.
This post in particular as I made my own website/blog hybrid is really useful, I had no idea what goes on in the process of Keywording so thanks a bunch!
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Nicholas Cardot said:
James Milne » Thanks, James. I sure do appreciate that encouragement. I’m really thrilled that you’re enjoying and using the content that you’re finding on here.