SEO Best Practices

Long tailed keywords; What are they?

To put it simply, long tailed keywords are keywords that are more descriptive. This means, they are very specific.

Let’s just say you are looking for a driving school near your locality. If you simply type in “driving school” in any of the search engines, you will get a whole lot of sites that are relevant to deriving schools but may not be relevant for you since you are looking for a driving school near your locality.

More and more searchers are realizing the value of typing in keywords that are more descriptive i.e. long tailed keywords. So in the above-mentioned example, it could be something like “driving schools near <location>. These keywords will indicate to the search engines what the searcher is searching for, the search engines will then fetch web pages that are relevant to the search terms used for searching.

From the SEO perspective, it is a good idea to use long tailed keywords when optimizing your web pages. Not only will you find visitors who are interested, the chances of conversions are very high indeed! Long tailed keywords usually do not have as much competition as keywords that are more generic, so your site will have a fair chance of ranking as well.

More and more searchers type in exactly what they are looking for. Almost all the searchers have little patience to sift through many sites since many of them search from their mobile phone and they want to get the information as fast as possible.

If your web site SEO strategy does not consider long tailed keywords, you might be missing out on precious traffic.

Earlier there were search engines and search directories. Searchers  would go to Google, Yahoo! MSN, Altavista, Askjeeves, Dmoz etc to search for anything they wanted.

Those were the days when we talked and discussed about the search engines…which one is better…Google or Yahoo! or Altavista or maybe MSN?

Directories like Yahoo! and Dmoz directories were and are very organized and since submissions were verified and accepted manually, one was sure to get authentic sites. In fact, if your site is registered in search directories such as, Dmoz and Yahoo! Directory it would give your site a lot of mileage and still does. Google was still in the process of bettering its search results page and we would quite often get a lot of irrelevant sites on searching.

From then and now, what has changed?

a) Search engines have really got better at the game, the results displayed on the SERPs are almost always bang on. Just type in the keyword on any search engine like Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and you are bound to get an answer to your query in a jiffy.

B )Today we are spoilt for choices… If it exists, it’s on Google they say! Besides that we have a choice of social networking sites like Facebook, Stumble upon, an authoritative site such as Wikipedia… what else can we ask for?

c) Almost everyone has any information they need at their fingertips, how fascinating is that! In a country like India, even if you visit the remotest of location, you will always find mobile stores selling mobile phones and connections. Cable operators provide internet connections as well. There are surfing joints in every locality.

The search engine wars still exist but today almost everyone knows Google and Yahoo! And I think Google is still in the lead because of it’s clean interface, it still has just that search box and therefore minimizes any sort of distraction for the users. The searchers go to Google to search and they do just that. Yahoo! Which is an equally good search engine, probably is the 2nd best choice because of quite a few factors but I would say that its interface is a bit distracting.

Essentially because it is more than a search engine, it is more of a search portal, a one stop shop for everything, which is great but to a searcher, it helps, if the searcher can go to a page an search without too many distractions.

Google has many of the features that Yahoo! has but because of the clean uncluttered interface and of course relevant results, it is so popular. Social networking sites have got even more popular, if your friend likes something, you would like to check it out too, right? And that’s how it works.

Most people are connected to Facebook from their mobiles, in fact quite a major proportion of the population search from their mobiles. With search and online experience getting more and more sophisticated and user friendly, I wonder what is next?

To best explain the evolution of websites, web site design, and SEO, I will divide this article into three phases-

Phase I- The Bygone era of website design and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

In the 90s when the internet started to get popular in terms of businesses starting to have a presence on the internet; I remember, it still took a lot of convincing for many businesses, especially small business owners to consider having an online presence. Back then, having an online presence was mostly like displaying a brochure online.  Many of these online businesses would put up their brochures online. That’s it. From the design perspective, businesses would not want to spend much on designing. Sometimes the whole page would be a huge image, sometimes just a few lines of text with contact numbers and an email id. Only a few businesses would perhaps have a full fledged website. As far as Search engine optimization goes, the maximum that Search Engine Optimizers (SEO was coming into being then and there weren’t really that many people doing SEO) could do was to provide titles, descriptions, and keyword Meta tags, and suggest the sites to search engines and search directories. The part that I liked back then is the ease with which web sites could rank with a relevant keyword; understandable since there were hardly that many sites competing, and SEO was even rarer!

Here, I will draw an analogy with constructing a home or building. We need a house, we do not have a house …so what do we do?

We construct a basic, very functional house; it serves the purpose, but is not really visually appealing. It’s just that; a house with rooms and walls to serve a purpose. I guess there wasn’t time or the need to mull over the finer aspects like making it attractive, it has to be constructed, and so be it.

Phase II- The evolving era of website designing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

With the availabilty of better tools, and more service providers coming into the field, the internet got a big boost, a new era of web designers were born, they design really beautiful web sites, with frames, with animations, flash, etc. But are these sites user friendly? Can people get to these sites? Do these sites download fast? Are they accessible?
From the SEO perspective, many search engines could not index such websites, because of heavy applications and images, websites took ages to download. That took away the patience of the visitors as well. We created beautiful websites but not many could find them! Finally when they did, they could not find everything on the site!

Again, if we draw an analogy with constructing a building, we construct beautiful home, spend huge amount of money to make it look beautiful, but are these homes safe, practical, and functional too?

Phase III -The new generation of web sites, website designers, and Search Engine Optimizers

We have a new generation of web designers who are familiar with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) nuances, they design keeping in mind various factors so that the end result is a perfect balance beauty and functionality. Striking this cord of course is not easy, one has to test and test and test constantly.

The point that is evident today is that we will see designers, developers, and Search Engine Optimizers work together. Today, almost everyone who has access to the internet has either shopped online, has downloaded eBooks, bought tickets, and much more. Websites are getting better and better, search engines results are very relevant these days.

And again, drawing an anology with constructing buildings; we have multi storied complexes that are functional and yet are not bad looking. A good amount of time is spent on planning and ensuring that there is a perfect marriage of beauty and functionality. The buildings are modern, eco friendly, and user friendly. Interesting!

Designing will continue to evolve and so will SEO, but they have to go hand in hand in order to provide the best to the end users. In summary, website designing has evolved into a creative science, creating website’s that are user friendly, good looking, and SEO friendly too!

For more on SEO and Website design, you can also check out this article on SEO and best practices for Website Designing that I wrote some time back.

I was recently asked this question.
Though often talked about, I thought it still might be a good idea to write about authoritative sites and what they mean in terms of online marketing/ SEO.

—»Simply put, an authoritative site (or an authority site) is a site that has an authority over a subject or upon various topics.

• Who decides the authority factor?

»I would say, an authoritative site’s performance, in terms of unique content, user experience, among other things, is the deciding factor.An authoritative site does not happen in one day. It takes a lot of effort and time to get to that stage.

Say, you have a question or a query or you wish to know about something, what do you do?

Besides asking people or checking out books for information, usually we Google our query or keyword/ keyphrase, or use any other search engine, and click on the most likely site from among the list of sites that show up on the SERPs.

Perhaps, the web page you click on the first time does not answer your query, what do you do?

You go to the next best page and so on…till you get your answer. Not only does the answer have to satisfy you, it would definitely help, if you can get some more relevant information from that site.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could stumble upon a website that offers just that! A website that is a mine of information and has extensive information on almost every relevant topic that you can think of!

The site would also reference other relevant sites, in case you wish to find out more about subjects related to it. That is what I call a complete site. Not only does it quench the visitor’s thirst for information but it also referes the visitor to other relevant sites. I would not want to lose such a site and would most definitely bookmark this site for future reference. The user experience combined with the extensive precious correct information is what makes a site authoritative.

Some of the most popular authoritative sites are -

Wikipedia, About,  and many edu domain sites. What is common between them? They have original unique content and about thousands and thousands of pages of unique content. They are referred by thousand of sites. They are any searchers delight and they fulfill almost every requirement. They are user friendly, they have interactive sections such as forums, blogs etc. Almost all of these websites have been in existence for years and they do not have any spamming background.

If terms of SEO or Internet marketing, it is really beneficial to get a link from these sites. A one way backlink from authority sites will definitely help your site get noticed by users and search engines, and increase traffic to your site. But these sites are extremely choosy. They maintain high standards and do not compromise on any factors.

If your website boasts of unique content that gets updated very often and has good traffic, you might get links from various sources and with time from authoritative site. Just keep up the hard work. Who knows, some day your site might warrant the same amount of respect as the ‘authoritative sites’ and become an authority too!