How dose SEO work ?

[user1978]

One subject i allways struggle with and i cant seem to get it to work for me.

I have seen the usal submit you site to 3,000,000 sites for £10 but i have heard this dose more harm than good.

I currently run a zen cart site with the seo url mod but i was wondering if it would be worth writing the meta tags and keywords for products my self ?? I underst and that they are meant to be under 200 characters long for search engines to read them . If i do re-write them in the meta tage do i write a sentance or just the same as the keywords.

Sorry if it sounds a bit thick but like i said i have not got a clue.

[gordym75]

It's always worth doing the meta data on your categories and products.

The keywords are what you reckon people will search for when looking for your products. Long tail keywords are easier to rank for then short tail e.g. you'll have less competition for "used 05 plate BMW 316i" than for "BMW 316"

The meta description is what the search engine will show under your link in the search results so keep it to a couple of sentences and make it relevant.

[user1978]

Ah i understand it alot better now.

So is it worth changing the meta and keywords from the default ones ??

[Beautybase]

I agree with gordym75..its well worth defining your meta tags

Thats an excercise I have been doing with my site over the last few weeks..by no means am I an expert but think its helping!

Use google keyword tools to identify your keywords if you haven't already 

[user1978]

Another helpful tip thank you very much 

[Serendipity]

You will notice on the posts an applaud or smite option.


You can use this in the same way as adding a helped point
Please do so as it aids members in finding the helpful posts 

Serendipity

[user1978]

What dose smite mean ??? I applauded the 2 that helped 

[Serendipity]

Definitions of smite on the Web:

    * inflict a heavy blow on, with the hand, a tool, or a weapon
    * affect suddenly with deep feeling; "He was smitten with love for this young girl"
    * afflict: cause physical pain or suffering in; "afflict with the plague"
      wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

    * Academic fencing or Mensur is the traditional kind of fencing practiced by some student corporations (Studentenverbindungen) in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and recently to a minor extent in Latvia and Flanders as well.
      en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smite

    * To hit; To strike down or kill with godly force; To injure with divine power
      en.wiktionary.org/wiki/smite


*courtesy of Google*

Serendipity

[user1978]

Thank you for searching google for me 

[Serendipity]

 

[Gothic Dropshipping]

as said above meta information is very important.

also get link building, try to add some links to your site every week, the higher quality and more relevant the better, if you sell let's say costumes for sake of putting something in this post, a link from say a Page Rank 5 website that is about (contains relevant text) about fancy dress costumes that will be worth 100s of links from low page rank directories etc.

Use some imagination in the titles you use in links, most people don't and that is often their biggest mistake, if your website is called  "sexy costumes"  links with a title "sexy costumes" is IMO poor, that's already your URL if you're not getting first page of google for it there's something very wrong, use lots of different link titles the more the better, but use relevant search terms for your titles like "nurse fancy dress costumes" or "pirate fancy dress costumes" etc.  this reinforces with search engines how important your site is for those terms of course having the terms in your site is somewhat relevant but kind of obvious.

SEO is a huge subject, but honestly I've always found getting on page 1 of google (if not position 1) actually quite easy for search terms I've wished to get there for and it's not through any great knowledge of SEO or me being some sort of self claimed 'expert' on the subject.

Good Meta information on your site
Relevant text content on your site
Good use of heading tags on your site
Quality and relevant links to your site

^^ do those things and do them right and your should rank well!

[user1978]

Thank you Micheal some very good points there that i need to follow

[Gothic Dropshipping]

feel free to post your website url or PM it to me if you would like me to take a look and give more targeted advice

[Lemon Blossom]

I have a quick tip... make sure that you make a note of the amendments you make, as, if for whatever reason your changes actually have an adverse affect, you are able to change all your information back to the way it was. 

[conran]

I have to admit I have followed the guides suggesting adding meta KEYWORDS doesn't do anything. Although I did add them to some pages just to see what the difference would be. As far as I can tell it doesn't make any difference, but then I'm only seeing search results from Google. I'm guessing Yahoo and others are still dragging their heels indexing. Which kind of shows why they lag far behind Google for support among webmasters!

All I've done is optimize my pages and article descriptions to include keywords, and add a bit of original content creating internal links, then create links in from blogs, articles and forums. Within a month of doing this I'm appearing on Google UK search for two highly competitive keywords within the first two pages.
I'm on page 1 for several long-tail keywords too. Mostly within the first four results.

It does take time, and work. But I believe the primary driving force is combining original content with links into your site.