The SEO Game
Everybody wants others to take notice of their hard work, whether it's an artist displaying their latest piece in an art gallery, an employee hoping their boss will give them a decent raise, or simply a friend saying "Good Job". On the Internet, random people from all over the world can look at somebody's work via links on other pages, search engines, or by directly typing the address into their browser. Everybody that puts a page on the Internet with the desire for others to view it must answer the questions:
How do I get links to my web page on other people's websites?
How do I get my webpage listed in the top few results of a search engine query?
How do I get my address in front of people so that they will directly type it into their browser?
These questions form the basis of what I like to call "The SEO Game", which could also be referred to as Online Marketing.
It's a fun game that anybody can play, and it can be completely free.
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SEO Game Rules
For a person to understand the game, they must first understand the playing field, the terminology, and the rules. This article, Increasing Traffic to Your Gallery, explains the basics of how search engines work, and since the majority of the online community finds websites through a search engine, they make the rules that everybody has to abide by. Those that don’t comply can be dropped from their listings. Getting removed basically means "Game Over".
Winning the Game
In a race, it's easy to tell who the winner is. The SEO game doesn't have a definite winner because winning is subjective to each person. Somebody might be happy with 10 people viewing their webpage, while another person won't be happy unless 10,000 or maybe even 10 million people view it. Winning is simply achieving the goal that the person set out for. With that in mind, common measures of success are:
- Reaching a particular number of visitors per day.
- Getting a particular number of comments about the page.
- Showing up in the top 10 results for a particular keyword phrase on the main SE websites.
- Achieving a certain Google PageRank score for the page.
- Getting a certain number of links back to a particular webpage.
Specifically for the members of The Lens Flare, goals might include:
- Getting a certain number of comments on a page.
- Achieving a certain score
- Getting a picture listed on the "What's Hot" page.
- Getting a particular number of page views or page views/day for a specific picture.
Strategy
You’ll need a strategy to win any game or achieve any goal, and like any game, there will be hundreds if not thousands of different opinions on the best one.
My strategy for the SEO game is fairly simple and straightforward and is broken down into three parts. This strategy helps attract people through links from other websites as well as Internet searches on Google, MSN, and Yahoo.
Part 1: Research the Competition
First, you should take a look at the pages that are already listed for your subject in Google. Do a search for a phrase that you'd like to be listed on (see part 2 for specifics) and look at the top 10 results. Specifically, look at what the PageRank is among the top pages, and add one for every time your phrase shows up in their address or title, then average out the overall score. If it's above 5, consider using a different phrase because it will be near impossible to rank well. If it's 4-5, understand that to be listed, you'll need 10 or more relative links to your page to have a chance. If it's 2-3, you're in good shape to be listed near the top with 1-2 relative links. If it's less than 2, consider choosing a more popular search phrase as your main one, but still include this phrase within the main description or body of your page.
Part 2: Content & Keyword Phrase
First, the page needs to have enough information to be useful for somebody visiting as well as enough for the search engines to determine that it's a unique page on the internet.
For pages in TLF's gallery, the description should consist of at least 2-3 paragraphs about the subject in the image; for example, if it's a photo of a landscape, the description should explain where it is, interesting information about the location, details of how the photograph was taken or any post production work that was done to it, and other information that is entertaining or educational to the person visiting the page.
Second, the page should contain at least one keyword phrase, and several supporting keyword phrases.
A keyword phrase is a word or a group of words that somebody will type in Google's search box. It's next to impossible for a page to show up in the top 10 for a popular one-word search such as photography, art, or camera unless there are thousands of highly related pages linking to that page. However, it is very possible for a somewhat unknown page to rank well on a two or three word phrase. For example, instead of trying to rank within the top 10 results for the search term "bird", try using "bald eagle", "green parakeet", or "talking parrot". To do this, your description needs to include the phrase once (at most twice, but only if the description is long). It should also show up in your page title and the most descriptive word should be used in the address (For TLF gallery members, this is your keyword box). The rest of your description should support the keyword phrase. Think of all of the words that are related to your phrase, and use a thesaurus or other tool to help think up even more. For example, if you are aiming for the search phrase "African white lion", other words that are similar might be cat, animal, cub, mammal, lioness, etc. These words will help you write a better, more informative description that is interesting to both your human and robot visitors. Also, web spiders will not be confused about your page's topic. For TLF members, a good way to know if you were successful is to look at the Google links on the page. Is at least one of them related to your chosen topic? If not, you should consider editing your description and adding more information about your subject. However, you should know that once the search engine has looked at your page, it maybe a few weeks to a month before they'll look at it again.
Part 3: Google PageRank
The second part of the equation is Google's PageRank score. Until a page receives a score, it will be very difficult to show up at the top of the result pages for somewhat popular phrases.
First thing you need to do is download Google's toolbar for Internet Explorer or Firebox. This includes a nice bar that indicates the PageRank for whatever page you are currently looking at. It also includes an icon that looks like a blue 'I', which contains a link to a page’s backlinks as well as Google's cached snapshot. It may take a week before Google will cache your page. Once you see that it’s been cached, you can rest assured that it has been added to their index and on the next PageRank update, your page will receive a score from 1-10. Pages with no backlinks listed usually will get a score of 1-2 on the first update. Pages with 1-2 links will usually get a score of 2-3. Pages with 1-10 links will get a score of 4-5. Currently, a score of five is the best any page on The Lens Flare can achieve until the overall relevant links to the website are in the hundreds or thousands; however, this is definitely high enough to rank within the top 10 for somewhat popular two or three word searches.
To get a good PageRank, you need links from other pages that are relative to yours. They need to be normal html anchor links that point directly to your page (rather than a redirect or counter page), and they cannot include the special parameter 'rel=nofollow'.
The Lens Flare is constantly working on improving the site's navigation so that more pages will benefit from internal linking. Adding links to dynamic galleries on each image's page is the most recent attempt at providing an infrastructure to help this. However, it's not enough. Only a few pages without the benefit of links from other sites will ever receive a PR of 4-5, and most of these will be the main navigational pages such as the articles home page and the message board. Links from the rest of the web are needed, and the closer to your page's subject, the better. The text within the link is important too. If words are used that is similar to your chosen keyword phrase, it will help your results substantially.
Here are some suggestions to increase the number of links to your webpage:
- Link to your pages from other websites that you own or control.
- Link to pages in related public forums, groups, or message boards, but make sure that you're following the message board's Terms of Use so that you're not labeled as a spammer.
- Include a link in any comments you make on bloggers' postings.
- Include a link to your pages on your own blog.
- Ask friends and associates to link to you from their websites and/or blogs.
- Write articles for websites that will allow you to post a link to your pages on the article. The Lens Flare supports this and will allow people to write articles related to art, photography, and nature. In addition to a link to a person's website, a Silver or Gold membership will be given to the article writer depending on the quality and quantity of the documents written.
Quick Reference Guide
This section recaps the earlier sections into a quick reference guide.
- Use Google Toolbar to view PageRank, Backlinks, and Cached Snapshot.
- Determine one main two to three word phrase, and many supporting keywords and phrases.
- Search on Google, MSN, and Yahoo for your main phrase and look at the top 10 results to gauge your competition.
- Write several paragraphs of information using the main phrase and as many of the others as possible. Each word shouldn't be used more than once or twice.
- Link to the page from several other related websites and public forums. For each page, try to get links from at least 10 different websites with similar information.
- Remain ethical and don't use spam techniques or your page will be banned from the search engines.
About the Author
Brian Broderick (http://www.brianbroderick.com) is a semi-pro nature photographer and the creator of The Lens Flare. His hobbies include hiking, skiing, and computer graphics, and is currently a web programmer.
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