Welcome to part five in this search engine positioning series. Last week we discussed the importance of content optimization. In part five we will cover your website’s internal linking structure and the role that it plays in ranking highly, and in ranking for multiple phrases.

While this aspect is not necessarily the single most important of the ten steps it can be the difference between first page and second page rankings, and can make all the difference in the world when you are trying to rank your website for multiple phrases.

Over this series we will cover the ten key aspects to a solid search engine positioning campaign.

The Ten Steps We Will Go Through Are:

1. Keyword Selection
2. Content
3. Site Structure
4. Optimization
5. Internal Linking
6. Human Testing
7. Submissions
8. Link Building
9. Monitoring
10. The Extras

Step Five – Internal Linking

With all the talk out there about linking, one might be under the impression that the only links that count are those from other websites. While these links certainly play an important role (as will be discussed in part eight of this series) these are certainly not the only important links.

When you’re about to launch into your link work why not stop and consider the ones that are easiest to attain and maximize first. That would be, the ones right there on your own site and those which you have total and complete control of. Properly used internal links can be a useful weapon in your SEO arsenal.

The internal linking structure can:

1. Insure that your website gets properly spidered and that all pages are found by the search engines
2. Build the relevancy of a page to a keyword phrase
3. Increase the PageRank of an internal page

Here is how the internal linking structure can affect these areas and how to maximize the effectiveness of the internal linking on your own website.

Getting Your Website Spidered

Insuring that every page of your website gets found by the search engine spiders is probably the simplest thing you can do for your rankings. Not only will this increase the number of pages that a search engine credits your site with, but it also increases the number of phrases that your website has the potential to rank for.

I have seen websites that, once the search engines find all of their pages, find that they are ranking on the first page and seeing traffic from phrases they never thought to even research or target.

This may not necessarily be the case for you however having a larger site with more pages related to your content will boost the value of your site overall. You are offering this content to your visitors, so why hide it from the search engines.

Pages can be hidden from search engines if the linking is done in a way that they cannot read. This is the case in many navigation scripts. If your site uses a script-based navigation system then you will want to consider the implementation of one of the internal linking structures noted further in the article.

Additionally, image-based navigation is spiderable however the search engines can’t see what an image is and thus, cannot assign any relevancy from an image to the page it links to other than assigning it a place in your website hierarchy.

Building The Relevancy Of A Page To A Keyword Phrase

Anyone who wants to get their website into the top positions on the search engines for multiple phrases must start out with a clearly defined objective, including which pages should rank for which phrases. Generally speaking it will be your homepage that you will use to target your most competitive phrase and move on to targeting less competitive phrases on your internal pages.

To help build the relevancy of a page to a keyword phrase you will want to use the keyword phrase in the anchor text of the links to that page. Let’s assume that you have a website hosting company. Rather than linking to your homepage with the anchor text “home” link to it with the text “web hosting main”. This will attach the words “web” and “hosting” and “main” to your homepage. You can obviously leave the word “main” out if desirable however in many cases it does work for the visitor (you know, those people you’re actually building the site for).

This doesn’t stop at the homepage. If you are linking to internal pages either through your navigation, footers, or inline text links – try to use the phrases that you would want to target on those pages as the linking text. For example, if that hosting company offered and wanted to target “dedicated hosting”, rather than leaving the link at solely the beautiful graphic in the middle of the homepage they would want to include a text link with the anchor text “dedicated hosting” and link to this internal page. This will tie the keywords “dedicated hosting” to the page.

In a field as competitive as hosting this alone won’t launch the site to the top ten however it’ll give it a boost and in SEO, especially for competitive phrases, every advantage you can give your site counts.

Increasing The PageRank Of Internal Pages

While we will be discussing PageRank (a Google-based term) here the same rules generally apply for the other engines. The closer a page is in clicks from your homepage, the higher the value (or PageRank) the page is assigned. Basically, if I have a page linked to from my homepage it will be given more weight that a page that is four or five levels deep in my site.

This does not mean that you should link to all of your pages from your homepage. Not only does this diffuse the weight of each individual link but it will look incredibly unattractive if your site is significantly large.

Figure out what your main phrases are and which pages will be used to rank for them and be sure to include text links to these internal pages on your homepage. It’s important to pick solid pages to target keyword phrases on as you don’t want human visitors going to your “terms and conditions” page before they’ve even seen the products.

If that hosting company noted above has a PageRank 6 homepage, the pages linked from its homepage will generally be a PageRank 5 (sometimes 4, sometimes 6 depending on the weight of the 6 for the homepage). Regardless, it will be significantly higher that if that page was linked to from a PageRank 3 internal page.

How To Improve Your Internal Linking Structure

There are many methods you can use to improve your internal linking structure. The three main ones are:

1. Text link navigation
2. Footers
3. Inline text links

Text Link Navigation

Most websites include some form of navigation on the left hand side. This makes it one of the first things read by a search engine spider (read “Table Structures For Top Search Engine Positioning” by Mary Davies for methods on getting your content read before your left hand navigation). If it is one of the first things the search engine spiders sees when it goes through your site it will have a strong weight added to it so it must be optimized with care.

If you are using text link navigation be sure to include the targeted keywords in the links. Thankfully this cannot be taken as meaning “cram your keywords into each and every link” because this is your navigation and that would look ridiculous. I’ve seen sites that try to get the main phrase in virtually every link. Not only does this look horrible but it may get your site penalized for spam (especially if the links are one after another).

You don’t have to get your keywords in every link but if workable, every second or third link works well. Also consider what you are targeting on internal pages. If your homepage target is “web hosting” and you’ve linked to your homepage in the navigation with “web hosting main” which is followed by your contact page so you’ve used “contact us”, it would be a good idea to use the anchor text “dedicated hosting” for the third link. It reinforces the “hosting” relevancy and also attaches relevancy to the dedicated hosting page of the site to the phrase “dedicated hosting” in the anchor text.

Footers

Footers are the often overused and abused area of websites. While they are useful for getting spiders through your site and the other points noted above, they should not be used as spam tools. I’ve seen in my travels, footers that are longer than the content areas of pages from websites linking to every single page in their site from them. Not only does this look bad but it reduces that value of each individual link (which then become 1 out of 200 links rather than 1 out of 10 or 20).

Keep your footers clean, use the anchor text well, and link to the key internal pages of your website and you will have a well optimized footer. You will also want to include in your footer a link to a sitemap. On this sitemap, link to every page in your site. Here is where you can simply insure that every page gets found. Well worded anchor text is a good rule on your sitemap as well. You may also want to consider a limited description of the page on your sitemap. This will give you added verbiage to solidify the relevancy of the sitemap page to the page you are linking to.

Internal Text Links

Internal text links are links placed within the content of your work. They were covered in last week’s article on content optimization, which gives me a great opportunity to use one as an example.

While debatable, inline text links do appear to be given extra weight as their very nature implies that the link is entirely relevant to the content of the site.

You can read more on this in last week’s article.

Final Notes

As noted above, simply changing your internal navigation will not launch your site to the top of the rankings however it’s important to use each and every advantage available to create a solid top ten ranking for your site that will hold it’s position.

They will get your pages doing better, they will help get your entire site spidered, they will help increase the value of internal pages and they will build the relevancy of internal pages to specific keyword phrases.

Even if that’s all they do, aren’t they worth taking the time to do right?

Welcome to part four in this search engine positioning series. Last week we discussed the importance of the structure of your website and the best practices for creating an easily spidered and easily read site. In part four we will discuss content optimization.

This is perhaps the single most important aspect of ranking your website highly on the search engines. While all of the factors covered in this series will help get your website into the top positions, it is your content that will sell your product or service and it is your content that the search engines will be reading when they take their “snapshot” of your site and determine where it should be placed in relation to the other billions of pages on the Internet.

Over this series we will cover the ten key aspects to a solid search engine positioning campaign.

The Ten Steps We Will Go Through Are: Keyword Selection

Content

Site Structure

Optimization

Internal Linking

Human Testing

Submissions

Link Building

Monitoring

The Extras

Step Four – Content Optimization

There are aspects of the optimization process that gain and lose importance. Content optimization is no exception to this. Through the many algorithm changes that take place each year, the weight given to the content on your pages rises and falls. Currently incoming links appear to supply greater advantage than well-written and optimized content. So why are we taking an entire article in this series to focus on the content optimization?

The goal for anyone following this series is to build and optimize a website that will rank well on the major search engines and, more difficult and far more important, hold those rankings through changes in the search engine algorithms. While currently having a bunch of incoming links from high PageRank sites will do well for you on Google you must consider what will happen to your rankings when the weight given to incoming links drops, or how your website fares on search engines other than Google that don’t place the same emphasis on incoming links.

While there are many characteristics of your content that are in the algorithmic calculations, there are a few that consistently hold relatively high priority and thus will be the focus of this article. These are:

Heading Tags

Special Text (bold, colored, etc.)

Inline Text Links

Keyword Density

Heading Tags

The heading tag (for those who don’t already know) is code used to specify to the visitor and to the search engines what the topic is of your page and/or subsections of it. You have 6 predefined heading tags to work with ranging from

to

. By default these tags appear larger than standard text in a browser and are bold. These aspects can be adjusted using the font tags or by using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).

Due to their abuse by unethical webmasters and SEO’s, the weight given to heading tags is not what it could be however the content between these tags is given increased weight over standard text. There are rules to follow with the use of heading tags that must be adhered to. If you use heading tags irresponsibly you run the risk of having your website penalized for spam even though the abuse may be unintentional.

When using your heading tags try to follow these rules:

Never use the same tag twice on a single page

Try to be concise with your wording

Use heading tags only when appropriate. If bold text will do then go that route

Don’t use CSS to mask heading tags

Never use the same tag twice on a single page. While the

tags holds the greatest weight of the entire heading tags, its purpose is to act as the primary heading of the page. If you use it twice you are obviously not using it to define the main topic of the page. If you need to use another heading tag use the

tag. After that the

tag and so on. Generally I try never to use more than 2 heading tags on a page. Try to be concise with your wording. If you have a 2 keyword phrase that you are trying to target and you make a heading that is 10 words long then your keyword phrase only makes up about 20% of the total verbiage. If you have a 4-word heading on the other hand you would then have a 50% density and increased priority given to the keyword phrase you are targeting.

Use heading tags only when appropriate. If bold text will do then go that route. I have seen sites with heading tags all over the place. If overused the weight of the tags themselves are reduced with decreasing content and “priority” being given to different phrases at various points in the content. If you have so much great content that you feel you need to use many heading tags you should consider dividing the content up into multiple pages, each with its own tag and keyword target possibilities. For the most part, rather than using additional heading tags, bolding the content will suffice. The sizing will be kept the same as your usual text and it will stand out to the reader as part of the text but with added importance.

Don’t use CSS to mask heading tags. This one just drives me nuts and is unnecessary. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) serve many great functions. They can be used to define how a site functions, looks and feels however they can also be used to mislead search engines and visitors alike. Each tags has a default look and feel. It is fine to use CSS to adjust this somewhat to fit how you want your site to look. What is not alright is to adjust the look and feel to mislead search engines. It is a simple enough task to define in CSS that your heading should appear as regular text. Some unethical SEO’s will also then place their style sheet in a folder that is hidden from the search engine spiders. This is secure enough until your competitors look at the cached copy of your page (and they undoubtedly will at some point) see that you have hidden heading tags and report you to the search engines as spamming. It’s an unnecessary risk that you don’t need to take. Use your headings properly and you’ll do just fine.

Special Text

“Special text” (as it is used here) special is any content on your page that is set to stand out from the rest. This includes bold, underlined, colored, highlighted, sizing and italic. This text is given weight higher than standard content and rightfully so. Bold text, for example, is generally used to define sub-headings (see above), or to pull content out on a page to insure the visitor reads it. The same can be said for the other “special text” definitions.

Search engines have thus been programmed to read this as more important than the rest of the content and will give it increased weight. For example, on our homepage we begin the content with “Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning …” and have chosen to bold this text. This serves two purposes. The first is to draw the eye to these words and further reinforce the “brand”. The second purpose (and it should always be the second) is to add weight to the “Search Engine Positioning” portion of the name. It effectively does both.

Reread your content and, if appropriate for BOTH visitors and search engines, use special text when it will help draw the eye to important information and also add weight to your keywords. This does not mean that you should bold every instance of your targeted keywords nor does it mean that you should avoid using special text when it does not involve your keywords. Common sense and a reasonable grasp of sales and marketing techniques should be your guide in establishing what should and should not be drawn out with “special text”.

Inline Text Links

Inline text links are links added right into text in the verbiage of your content. For example, in this article series I may make reference to past articles in the series. Were I to refer to the article on keyword selection, rather than simply making a reference to it as I just have it might be better to write it as, “Were I to refer to the article on keyword selection rather …”

Like special text this serves two purposes. The first is to give the reader a quick and easy way to find the information you are referring to. The second purpose of this technique is to give added weight to this phrase for the page on which the link is located and also to give weight to the target page.

While this point is debatable, there is a relatively commonly held belief that inline text links are given more weight that a text link which stands alone. If we were to think like a search engine this makes sense. If the link occurs within the content area then chances are it is highly relevant to the content itself and the link should be counted with more strength than a link placed in a footer simply to get a spider through the site.

Like “special text” this should only be employed if it helps the visitor navigate your site. An additional benefit to inline text links is that you can help direct your visitors to the pages you want them on. Rather than simply relying on visitors to use your navigation bar as you are hoping they will, with inline text links you can link to the internal pages you are hoping they will get to such as your services page, or product details.

Keyword Density

For those of you who have never heard the term “keyword density” before, it is the percentage of your total content that is made up of your targeted keywords. There is much debate in forums, SEO chat rooms and the like as to what the “optimal” keyword density might be. Estimates seem to range from 3% to 10%.

While I would be the first to admit that logic dictates that indeed there is an optimal keyword density. Knowing that search engines operate on mathematical formulas implies that this aspect of your website must have some magic number associated with it that will give your content the greatest chance of success.

With this in mind there are three points that you should consider:

You do not work for Google or Yahoo! or any of the other major search engines (and if you do you’re not the target audience of this article). You will never know 100% what this “magic number” is.

Even if you did know what the optimal keyword density was today, would you still know it after the next update? Like other aspects of the search engine algorithm, optimal keyword densities change. You will be chasing smoke if you try to constantly have the optimal density and chances are you will hinder your efforts more than help by constantly changing the densities of your site.

The optimal keyword density for one search engine is not the same as it is for another. Chasing the density of one may very well ruin your efforts on another.

So what can you do? Your best bet is to simply place your targeted keyword phrase in your content as often as possible while keeping the content easily readable by a live visitor. Your goal here is not to sell to search engines, it is to sell to people. I have seen sites that have gone so overboard in increasing their keyword density that the content itself reads horribly. If you are simply aware of the phrase that you are targeting while you write your content then chances are you will attain a keyword density somewhere between 3 and 5%. Stay in this range and, provided that the other aspects of the optimization process are in place, you will rank well across many of the search engines.

Also remember when you’re looking over your page that when you’re reading it the targeted phrase may seem to stand out as it’s used more than any other phrase on the page and may even seem like it’s a bit too much. Unless you’ve obviously overdone it (approached the 10% rather than 5% end of the spectrum) it’s alright for this phrase to stand out. This is the phrase that the searcher was searching for. When they see it on the page it will be a reminder to them what they are looking for and seeing it a few times will reinforce that you can help them find the information they need to make the right decision.

Final Notes

In an effort to increase keyword densities, unethical webmasters will often use tactics such as hidden text, extremely small font sizes, and other tactics that basically hide text from a live visitor that they are providing to a search engines. Take this advice, write quality content, word it well and pay close attention to your phrasing and you will do well. Use unethical tactics and your website may rank well in the short term but once one of your competitors realizes what you’re doing you will be reported and your website may very well get penalized. Additionally, if a visitor realizes that you’re simply “tricking” the search engines they may very well decide that you are not the type of company they want to deal with; one that isn’t concerned with integrity but rather one that will use any trick to try to get at their money. Is this the message you want to send?