So much about Keywords...and I missed it

I am dumb. I have known for awhile that keywords and keyword phrases are important to help you rank on search engines. Keyword density is important as well. If your page is saturated with the same keyword, you could be penalized in the rankings. Again it will be looked down upon as spaming. So to my story...

Our company is SinglePoint Networks and this last week I have been optimizing our site so we rank #1 for SinglePoint Networks(currently 3rd). Right now there is a British company with the same name that ranks higher in Google. So I have been doing some things to beat them out. One thing I corrected today was the fact that SinglePoint was repeated 16 times on our home page! Anyways, I deleted some words and its down to 6..I think. Hopefully it'll help.

Headers h1, h2,h3, and so on...

Well here is some advice that I got from a SEO forum. To help me optimize my site and rank for a particular word. I was told to add headers to the html text. I wasn't told why but I have researched it a little and it looks like google likes it. And that is all that matters to me....One thing I learned before, but obviously forget, was that h1 is referring to a header and the number relates to the size of the text. The smaller the number the bigger the text. It goes from h1 to h6. I also read that search engines like h2 headings along with h1's. If you only have h1 headings it could be considered spam. I guess a couple of years ago spammers would have only h1 headers on the page to rank better. Anyways just something I learned today.

Google rankings

I just found out today that our site, SinglePoint Networks is #1 for my keyword phrase that I have been trying to rank for. Check it out...search for Asterisk consulting Utah. Then we are #12 for Asterisk consulting. It is easier to rank higher for keyword phrases than one word. The competition is so much higher for one word keywords. There are a few other keywords that we have high rankings for, mainly for Asterisk, which is a software for VoIP phone systems which we sell, support, and install. It's an open source software that is complicated to learn. But a lot of small businesses are looking into it because it is relatively inexpensive. As Asterisk consultants we service clients in the Las Vegas and Utah areas and provide support for them as well. Check us out if you are interested.

Now I am going to get us ranked for other keywords. I'll let you know how it goes.
To do this I am going to analyze the keyword density on the web pages, make some edits and add some active links, linking back to the site. An active link is what I did above. You have a link to your site, but you use a keyword for the link. I guess google really likes that...

SEO link analysis tools

Here are some more sites I found that are great to analyze competitor sites.
The first is a 'tool bar' that enables you to see the links from major searh engines for each site you visit. It also gives page rank according to Alexa. The site is: www.addons.mozilla.org/firefox/3036/

It's a mozilla add on that I like. I can quickly see page rank and links.

Another good site to use is www.marketleap.com. I like this site better than the one refenced on my othe blog (Submit Express), Marketleap also helps you see if your main keywords are in the top 3 pages of major search engines. Pretty cool. Also, you can compare multiple webpages at the same time.

If anyone knows of a better site please add. There are hundreds of sites that have Internet Marketing tools, these are just the ones I am familiar with.

My quick story and some SEO tools.

In June of 06 I had no idea of the SEO world and how in depth it was. I also had no clue about programming, web designing, or HTML stuff. Luckily the forums I mentioned in the earlier blog have helped me understand how to add meta tags, alt tags, and keyword links. Since June I have purchased a book on SEO and have actively participated in the Forums (more reading than posting!). There is so much more to learn and I am assuming that will come with time. The SEO basics have given our site great placements (top 5) for a few keywords or keyword phrases. Now I am working on other keywords so I get better placement. I mainly focus on google because I figure if I get good placement with google, Yahoo and MSN will follow (I could be wrong!).

Anyways, the company I work for is a Technical/Telecom company, but now we are starting to offer basic Internet Marketing services for Utah and Las Vegas. We mainly market this service to our current clients, as I gain experience, we will market SEO services online.

One thing that has helped me recently is analyzing my competitors sites and using SEO tools to see how they are optimizing their sites. You can see what there meta tags are, so you know what keywords they are trying to rank for. Here is one site (not the best but great for beginners):www.submitexpress.com. Go to the tools tab and mess around.

Another trick is to use your Internet browser. Go to the competitors site, then on the bar above go to View, and then Page Source. This will show you the Html of that current page. Come in handy when you are trying to place higher than a competitor!

SEO forums

Search Engine Optimization is a whole different world. I never knew it existed until I tried to start driving more traffic to my site. A friend taught me the basics and since then I have been studying it. There are some good SEO forums that have helped me understand more basics and the people actually respond to your beginner questions! The 2 I prefer are www.searchguild.com and www.geeksonsteriods.com.
These forums, and the SEObook by Aaron Wall have helped me get to the point where I feel I can start teaching others little tricks about how to optimize their sites. In Utah, I began to offer my internet marketing services to friends and family so I could get more experience. For the most part it's basic SEO but even this helps people get started. It is surprising how some business owners don't even know how to submit their sites to google or Yahoo!
My blogg will be about the basics of SEO and the things I have learned. We recently began offering Internet Marketing services to other businesses. If you know someone in Las Vegas or Utah that needs Internet Marketing help, have them check out the SinglePoint Networks site.
We also offer a fully hosted VoIP phone system and computer network.