About the Author

In order to best explain the how’s and why’s of my search
optimization approach I need to tell you a bit about how I started. In
1991-92, I began using the Internet. This period of time was prior to
web browsers being used to view documents on what is known today
as the World Wide Web. In that period of time there were no web
browsers, the Internet was a command line text only network that was
used to transfer files and short text messages. I would say sometime
around late 1994 I ran across the Mosaic web browser. Of course, at
that time web pages mostly text documents with few if any images to
view. In 1994-95, I build my first web page and it was ghastly, all
centered text and images. Luckily, I learned a few things about web
design and my current work is much improved. In any case, around
the same time Alta Vista search engine was king of the search
engines and I began toying around with keywords, descriptions and
titles in my web pages and found through trial and error how to get
receive favorable search engine referrals for the web pages listed in
Alta Vista. Not too long after that, Yahoo.com and other search
engines appeared and through trial and error found ways to receive
favorable search engine results. After Yahoo search launched it
seemed that a new search engine appeared nearly daily. I tried
different approaches but found that at the time my best and most
consistent referrals came from Alta Vista and Yahoo.
Around 1998-99 Google appeared and fr om the very start I became
intrigued with the search engine. It was not long before Google made large strides in search engine popularity. From the very start, I was
experimenting with keywords, titles and descriptions as well as
content to see how Google would react to my changes. After several
years, I noticed a pattern of success with search engines that
delivered a high and consistent (we are talking years) referral rate.
From around 1999 through 2006, I refined my technique and have
found that nearly all search engines respond favorably to my
approach and we began seeing good consistent results across the
major search engines.
I do not consider myself a search engine optimization guru by any
means, but I do have nearly 14 years experience publishing online
magazines and other online content. Through long hours, trial and
error I have discovered how a majority of search engines behave
under different circumstances. I guess you could say I am a search
engine behavior specialist. Over the years I noticed how many search
engines digest content from our websites and how they displayed (or
ranked) the content in their indexes. I have quite a few “test”
websites set up that I try different search engine optimization theories
on as well as test my own educated guesses on. From these sites and
our own online content sites, I have formulated a successful strategy
and techniques for good consistent and solid search engine traffic. All
of the methods I employ that you will read in this book are all
acceptable ways of gaining search engine results. You will find no
quick and dirty, underhanded or shady techniques in this book.
For several years I visited and participated in several search engine
optimization forums and read masses of articles on the subject. I
discovered that for the most part much of search engine optimization
is a myth or a collection of theories. What you are about to read in
this book will dispel many search engine optimization myths and give
you real world based on factual study information that you can use to
get good solid search engine results. Many persons that sell Search
Engine Optimization (SEO) services do not want you to read this
book, and as you read, you will understand why. There is no magic to
getting good search results. All that is needed is a methodical
approach that you can follow. You do not need a SEO expert to get
the same search results that we do.
I do offer search engine optimization services to business and
individuals as many do not have the time or inclination to optimize
their website. For those that do want to optimize their website or are
inclined to do it themselves I offer you this book, it contains the same
exact techniques that I employ on my own and SEO client’s websites.
I have no kept any "secrets" from you in this book. By purchasing my
book you will have access to the same knowledge as I do and if you
make good use of it, you will get the search engine referral traffic that
you are wanting.

IMAGE EXAMPLE (ABOVE) STEP BY STEP

Step 1. If you are using an image such as a logo, omit this step, if you
are using text at the top of the page rather than an image or logo then
you would want to use the first portion of the meta title here
(Photoshop Tutorials).
Step 2. This would be your site wide links to the different site
categories or if it is a small website links directly to the page (in this
case the example page). Revised: As you read earlier it is better to not
have any content before the actual page content. It is recommend that
that any site links appear to the right and after the main page conent.
Step 3. This would be your site navigation, if you have many
categories you would use category names such as: Tutorials, Articles,
News, etc. If the website is small and has only a few pages then you
would want to be specific and in the case of this example we would
use “Photoshop Tutorials” as the navigation link.
Step 4. If you are using a image such as a logo in step one you would
want to replicate the first portion of the meta title and use
(heading) tags for “Photoshop Tutorials”. If you used “Photoshop
Tutorials” text in number 1, then you would want to use number 5 for
the page heading (for Photoshop, Photoshop CS & Photoshop CS2)
here, since we already used the page heading in place of an image or
logo.
Step 5. If you are using a image or logo in number one and the
heading “Photoshop Tutorials” as outlined in number 4, then we
would use a smaller tag such as Heading 3 (

) to further
describe the page heading. If you used Text in number 1 you would
omit this step, since we used the heading descriptive heading in place
of the page heading.
Step 6. Links to other pages (tutorials in this example), not how each
link is described by its page title and I added Photoshop CS2 Tutorial
or Photoshop Tutorials. This is referred to Anchor Text.
Step 7. This is the on page spider food blurb that uses the keywords
and phrases both forwards and backwards. Be creative as you dare
here, but don’t over pad the blurb with keywords or phrases as it
might confuse your human visitors.
Step 8. This is the footer text and is similar to the top navigation; I
would encourage you to keep it consistent with the top navigation.
If you follow the steps above and implement what I discussed in
chapters 4 through 6, then you are now on your way to higher search
engine referrals.
Now we are going to “Bake In” the webpage optimizations and
submit to search engines as I outlined in chapter three. This is a
crucial point in search engine optimization as we have made our
initial optimizations and must wait for the search engine spiders to
index and present the changes in their indexes. If you have access to
website statistics or analytics then you to start monitoring them for
new search engine referrals. It can take from as little as a week to as
long as a month or more for the optimization changes to begin
showing in the various search engines indexes.
At least once a week go to the search engines you submitted to and
search for the keywords or phrases you are targeting, if after three
weeks or so no new results have begun to show you would want to
submit your pages or site again to that particular search engine. DO
NOT, I repeat DO NOT submit a web page more than once every
couple of weeks, if you do you could get blacklisted or banned for
search engine submission spam.
Once you start seeing improved search referrals dot not immediately
make changes to what you just optimized. Leave it alone for at least
90 days so you can see how well the pages are going to rank. I know
it is tempting to want to make changes after your start seeing an
improvement; however, it may take a while for the search engines to
rank your page and hold it consistently in the search results. After 90
or more day you may want to see what keywords or phrases you
might could add to the pages you are optimizing and increase the
optimization and gain even more search referrals. This is a judgment
call on your part. It is better to be a bit conservative than to throw the
whole “kitchen sink” into a single pages optimization. It is sometimes
better to create an additional page and use other similar keywords and
phrases rather than trying to carve out as much as you can referral
wise in a single page.
SEO Maintenance
Now that the optimization is complete, I periodically check to ensure
that the pages I have optimized haven’t slipped in the search engine
indexes. If they drop a bit I look at the results above my own and try
to determine if there are indeed some changes such as additional
keywords, keyword phrases or page content I can add to my pages to
boost them higher. If this is an initial page optimization I wait at least
90 days before making any sort of optimization changes. Slow and
methodical changes are better than frequent changes. Too many
changes in a short time may get a web page penalized and added to
what many search engines call the “sand box”. This is not a good
place for your web pages or website to be in. Think of a sand box as a
stagnate pool of water. Things in a stagnate pool of water don’t do
much of anything and just float around.
If you have followed my step by step implementation of optimizing
the sample page and use the same procedures on your web pages you
will be guaranteed to rank higher in the search engines and produce
excellent search engine referral traffic.

PuttingItTogether

” it contains real examples of the information
below, so that you can more easily see how to implement my
techniques. You can use a web browser or HTML editor to view the
pages and HTML source. For those who are using a web browser
only to view the pages in the
PuttingItTogether
folder I have also
included a text file with the HTML source.
Most web pages are comprised of three columns, much like an
ordinary table used in a word processing application. When a search
engine spider indexes a web page it starts at the top, then the left
column, then the center column then the right column. Web pages are
also rendered in web browsers in the same manner. Search engine
spiders read web pages much like humans do, Left to right, top to
bottom. The complexity of a table on the page doesn’t matter. The
spiders will read row by row then column by column in the order that
the table and contents are structured.
(A) Search engine spider starts here
Website navigation
(B) Search
(C) Search
(D) Search
engine then
engine then
engine spider
indexes this
indexes this
then indexes
area
area
this area
(E) The search engine spiders will index this area last
In this example, we are going to use “Photoshop Tutorials” as our
main keyword as well as “Adobe Photoshop”, “Photoshop CS” and
“Photoshop CS2”. Since there are several versions of the Adobe
Photoshop image editing software we would want to take advantage of as many as we can without going to far. After reading through the
examples below and viewing the included HTML pages I believe you
will have a more complete understanding of how to best implement
my techniques.
The example below is numbered and you will find the description of
each numbered item below the example. You will also find the same
HTML version of the example below in the

Putting it All Together

In chapters four through six I outlined my methodical approach to
search engine optimization. Now it is time to put everything together
and make use of the techniques I employ every day to maximize
search engine visibility. Below you will find a series of examples that
will help you had better understand all the pieces and how they fit
together.
What we have to put together is Meta Title, Meta Description, Meta
Keywords, Page Copy using keywords and phrases, Spider Food
Blurbs, Site Wide Links and then Baking it all in
Included with this book (in the original zip file) is a folder named

Visitors and Encouraging Them to Return

Unique and engaging content will subconsciously encourage a visitor
to return to your website. It is important to make your website stand
out and the surest way is high quality content. Even a poorly
designed website can have excellent visitor traffic if the content is
good. Search engine optimization only lends to and attracts search
engines, if the content is boring, then the repeat visitor rate will be
very low. Proper search engine optimization only helps to attract
visitors through search referrals, in order to sell products or to
monetize a website via advertising the repeat visitor is the
moneymaker. Search engine optimization is only one facet of
creating a high traffic website to sell products or to earn revenues
from advertising. There is no easy shortcut to good and unique
website content.