Online Dating Tools and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Criteria -- On-Site Search Engine Optimization. |
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Online Dating and On-Site SEO
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Being a webmaster of a online dating site is more than just pictures
and membership. It requires a lot of behind the scene effort. So, besides
running an online dating site, a good online dating webmaster has other resources
to help him in the competitive world of online dating. What follows
are resources I have used over time, plus I throw in some of my experience
from running a dating site. If anyone would like to contribute their
thoughts, please post them on the online dating forum. Obviously
the following can apply to any type of website, but my examples mostly
pertain to the online dating world. You can also disagree with
my opinions -- let me know -- that is how I learn.
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If you are going to compete in the search engine world, you have
to have a basic understanding of Search Engine Optimization
(SEO). I spend as much, if not more time with SEO work then
designing and maintaining my site. It is an ongoing process that
never ends.
Most webmasters try to optimize for Google, Yahoo, or MSN with Google
being the primary. I do just that, optimize for Google and this will
get me listed as well in the other search engines (SE). So how do you
optimize your website for Google -- you do it one page at a time.
Being that Google is my
primary concern, throughout I use Google in my examples.
SEO is broken down into two areas: (1) on-site SEO and (2) off-site
SEO. First we will talk about on-site SEO.
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On-Site SEO is all about doing those things
that make your page Search Engine ready. The following may help with your On-Site SEO work.
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Keywords are what it is all about. A webmaster has to try to come
up with search terms that he thinks people will use to find his site
in Google. For example, when someone types in online dating as
a search query, online dating is the keyword. However,
it's not as simple as picking a few keywords. You have to find your
niche...your place in the sun. Why? Because every dating site out there
is trying to get ranked on hot keywords like online dating.
Do your research and find some keywords that give results, yet is not
so competitive that it would take you years to get a good ranking.
I haven't
been around long enough to battle online dating sites like Yahoo Personals
and other big boys, but who knows, maybe 10 years from now I'll be
on top for every keyword in my industry. For now, I have to try to
define my piece of the pie and as I grow, keep reaching for that next
rung on the ladder. So, you have to find keywords that are related
to your industry and are competitive but not so competitive you can't
get ranked.
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<head></head> In between your head tags are some
things you need to take care of. This is pretty simple, yet many
people over
look this area:
Be sure you have a TITLE that has your keywords
listed. For example, my site is called Filipina Eyes, but who in
the heck uses
Filipina Eyes when searching for a dating service. So my title is: <title>note: please look at the source code of my index page to see the title </title> Filipina
lady is a good keyword when looking for an Asian Dating
Site so it is in my title.
Description. Same deal, use your keywords in your DESCRIPTION.
For example if your keyword is Filipina Lady, then say something
like: <META
name="description" content="Filipina Lady site for
meeting many Filipina Ladies for romance">
Meta Keywords. Some webmasters say META KEYWORDS are
not important, but I still use them. Basically its a list of keywords.
For example: <META name="keywords" content="filipina
lady, online dating, penpals, philippines">, and so on. I
separate my meta keywords with a comma.
All three -- title, description and meta keywords -- go between your
<head></head> tags. Your head tag is before your body tags <body></body>
A basic HTML page looks like this:
<HTML>
< HEAD>
<
TITLE>Online dating filipina lady and asian ladies at Filipina Eyes</TITLE>
<
META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="filipina lady, online
dating, asian lady, penpals, matchmaking">
<
META NAME="description" CONTENT="Find a Filipina
Lady to love at Filipina Eyes!">
< /HEAD>
<BODY text="#000000" bgColor="#ffffff">
<P CLASS="DefaultFont">
This is the main body text area.
< /P>
< /BODY>
< /HTML>
It's important to understand basic layout of your tags for search
engine purposes. <HTML></HTML> tags surround everything. The above
tags are color coded and extra spaces between to help them stand
out.
Don't spam. In other words, if your keyword is Filipina
Lady, don't make the mistake thinking if you put it 20 times in your
title, description or meta keywords, it will help your rankings. Just
the opposite, it will get you banned for spamming. It's a balancing
act. Enough keywords so Google knows you want to be ranked on that
word, but too much and Google will think you are spamming.
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<body></body> This is where the action is. This is where
you tell your faithful readers why you are the best. Not too surprising,
you need to scatter your keywords throughout your body. Some at the
top, some in the middle and some at the end. No Spamming, please.
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If only we could stop right here, SEO would be simple, right? But there
is more. Now that I got you thinking about keywords and where to place
them, lets get a little more specific.
<title>Online dating filipina lady and
asian ladies at Filipina Eyes.</title>
Usually your title tag shows up in search engine results. If someone is searching
for online dating and came across the above title, hopefully it gives them
enough information to determine if they want to click to my site -- or
it is so compelling they can't help but to visit. Put some thought into
your title tag
<meta name="description" content="Place
descriptive text>"
Many times, like the title tag, you will find part of your description in
search engine results. So again, give it some thought.
There is a lot more to the body than just spreading your keywords throughout.
So lets dedicate a section to the body.
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<body></body>
The first thing the experts tell you is that good content is essential.
Obviously, you could have keywords scattered throughout your body,
but if the content is boring you won't keep the reader around too long.
More on keywords -- lets talk about placement in the body. Be sure
to put primary keywords at the beginning of your body. If possible,
use in the first sentence and use again at the end of each paragraph.
Experts say use your keyword(s) at the beginning of the body, in the
middle and at the end. Do not place keywords one after another.
Use the longer and plural form of your keyword throughout the body.
Here is how one expert explained it:
"If you use marketing in your body text, a search on marketing
or market will yield a match on most engines. However, words like companies
will not always yield a match on company since company is not an exact "substring" of
companies. In these cases, you'll want to try and use both forms
of the word throughout your body."
Some say using the Header tags with keywords in your body helps.
Here is an example: <h1>Filipina Ladies Wanting Love</h1> which
looks like this:
Filipina Ladies Wanting Love
Alt Text -- <IMG SRC="eye.gif" ALT="Filipina Ladies
Photo"> This is the text that describes your image. So why
not use your keywords to describe them. One caution, don't over do
it or it will become a spamming issue.
Now it is time to talk about Link Text and HyperLink
URL. These are two areas that are placed in your body. Very
important for search engine rankings. So I'm going to take
them one at a time and try to explain it as well as I can. By the
way, don't get hung up on the terminology. Some webmasters call Link
Text Anchor Text or have other names. What is important is that you
understand how to use them, not what they are called.
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Link Text (in the body)
<A HREF="my-url-keyword-here.htm">My
Link Text Here</A>
Lets use the above in a real world situation. In my body I want
to put a link to my photo gallery. First, let me show you want not
to do.
To visit our photo gallery <a href="photo-galery">Click
Here</a>
Unless you want people to find you on the keyword Click
Here, you are not optimizing for your keywords. Instead
why not:
To visit our photo gallery, click <a href="photo-gallery.htm">Filipina
Lady.</a>
When someone clicks on the keyword Filipina Lady they go to my photo
gallery. This tells Google, that Filipina Lady must be important
since I used it in Link Text. This concept also applies to Off-Site
SEO, but I'll explain how it works under the Off-Site SEO section.
If you understand the above concept, you don't need to read any
further about Link Text. I have found that a lot of people have a
hard time grasping Link Text, so I'm going to explain it further
just in case you still don't get it.
Link text is the text that is visible when you create a link. If
right now you went to your HTML editor and typed Filipina Lady, than
created a link that pointed Filipina Lady to another html file, Filipina
Lady is your link text. It is the text that you would click on to
go to a link. Like I said, a lot of people use the words Click Here.
In the SEO world, this does you no good to use the words Click Here
as your link text unless that is the keyword you are trying to optimize
your page for -- which I doubt.
Ready -- Here is my example: You want to visit Filipina Eyes Photo
Gallery, click Online
Dating
If you click the link text "Online Dating" you will go
to my photo gallery.
Ready -- Here is a bad example: You want to visit Filipina Eyes
Photo Gallery, Click Here.
If you click "Click Here" you will go to my photo gallery,
but what is this telling the search engines. Are you telling them
that Click Here is an important key word for your site?
Ok, lets tackle Hyperlink URL next.
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Hyperlink URL (in the body)
<A HREF="my-url-keyword-here.htm">My
Link Text Here</A>
Hyperlink URL really requires some foresight to use it properly.
If you already have your website set up, it would take some work
to rework things. Let me explain in an example.
I'm setting up a new website for online dating. I did some research
and found out the words online dating are very competitive
and all the domain names with online dating in them are taken. My
research shows that some guys search for dating sites using the words foreign
penpal (later I will explain how to research keywords).
I find out that www.foreign-penpal.com is available so I grab that
as my domain name.
Next I start setting up my website. I know the home page is going
to be index.htm or index.html so I have no choice in naming that
file. However, I want to create a html file for my site map. So I
call it foreign-penpal-sitemap.html. Guess what, I now have two hyperlink
URLs. The first one was my domain name and the second one was when
I created my site map and named it foreign-penpal-sitemap.html. Of
course, this is only smart if I want to make foreign penpal
my primary keyword.
You may be asking yourself why do I have a domain name called filipinaeyes.
What can I say, I was just starting out and made my share of mistakes.
However, I put a lot of effort in other SEO areas to compensate for
my lack of foresight. I'm ranked well in my primary keyword.
<A HREF="my-url-keyword-here.htm">My
Link Text Here</A>
The hyperlink URL is the file the link text is pointing to. See
why I said it requires some foresight. If you already created all
your files and start renaming them, you may be risking broken links.
However, nothing stops you from using hyperlink URLs when you create
new pages. I have my pages and folders named after several keywords
on my site (note: these examples may of changed over time). Here are some examples:
asian-ladies-INS.htm (this pages talks about INS, but I named it
this way so google recognizes asian-ladies as a keyword)
filipina-lady-exchange.htm (this is one of my pages for my link
partners -- keyword is filipina lady).
online-dating-affiliate.htm (this page talks about my affiliate
program -- what word(s) do you think I'm trying to get recognized
on by google?)
I hope you get the idea. Like I said, if you haven't set up your
site with hyperlink URL in mind from the beginning, don't fret it.
Most people don't. Just keep it in mind when you create new pages.
By the way, I use the same concept when I create folders. One of
the folders that holds my photo gallery pictures is called:
online-dating-photo-gallery3 ( inside this folder are all my html
files, pictures and graphics for my photo gallery--obviously the
keyword is online-dating).
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Layout of a site is probably over looked when it comes to SEO, but
I think it is critical. You have to ask yourself, "what does
a search engine spider see when he visits your site?" or even
better, "what do you want the search engine spider to see and
in what order when it crawls your site." The reason I reworded
this, is because search engine technology is changing all the time.
At one time, google spiders ignored flash. I understand they now
can read flash. However, it still may not be the first thing I would
want google to see when it spiders my site. HTML text still has more
weight.
Same deal with graphics. They may be pretty, but will they get you
ranked higher? Again, the balancing act. Obviously, a website that
was all text would be boring. So the question is, where do I place
that graphic (especially on the home page) in relation to my main
text. In most cases, if everything is equal, the person who has his
keywords higher on the html page will get a better ranking.
The word for this is Keyword Prominence. Let's use an example. We
have two sites who are trying to get ranked well on the keyword foreign
penpal. We are just about equal in all SEO areas. However, site A
has a huge graphic at the beginning of his <body> tag, some
javascript and even a flash file. Site B has text right after his <body> tag.
Site B uses his keywords in a H1 tag for a heading and has his keywords
in his first sentence. The google spider sees Site A's keywords after
the graphic, flash and javascript on line 215. The google spider
sees Site B's keywords on line 30. Hmmmm, guess who wins if all else
is equal -- site B. Why, because they have their keywords closer
to the top of their HTML page.
Using a visual editor to create your web page is usually the biggest
reason for Keyword Prominence problems. Most webmasters are not aware
how their keywords are being placed in the code. If you don't know
how to look at your HTML code with your editor, than you must learn.
You can still design with the visual editor, but keep checking things
out using your HTML editor.
A lot of webmasters use tables to design their page. CSS is changing
all this, but for now let me point out the biggest problem with tables
and keyword prominence.
| Cell 1 |
Cell 2 |
| Cell 3 |
Cell 4 |
Most webmasters would put their menu/navigation in Cell 1. By doing
this, the first thing the SE spiders sees is the content of Cell
1. What I would want is the spider to see my main content first.
So I'm going to start my menu in Cell 3 and merge cells 2 and 4.
It would look like this.
| Cell 1 |
This is my main text. |
Menu 1
Menu 2
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Leave Cell 1 blank. If blank it should collapse and is barley noticeable.
If you do put something in Cell 1, make it HTML text that is keyword
rich. The important thing is putting your menu in the Cell 3 and
merging Cells 2 and 4 so you have Keyword Prominence when the spider
comes crawling.
If you look at the code for the two tables above you can see which
is placed higher in the HTML page. So get use to checking things
out by looking at your HTML code. After all, this is what the spider
sees -- so it is only smart to look at your code through the eyes
of a spider for Keyword Prominence.
Now all this goes out the door if you start using CSS (cascading
style sheets). I'll save CSS for another time. But even with CSS
the concept of Keyword Prominence applies. But CSS makes it a lot
easier for the spider to see text since you put a lot of your attributes
in an external file.
Update: I now design a lot of my pages with CSS. For example if you look at my home page (http://www.filipinaeyes.com) you see a graphic at top. However, if you look at the source code and understand CSS, the codes for the graphic is at the bottom of the page and CSS places the graphic at the top. Remember, it is the code that the spider sees, not the layout you see when viewing a page.
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If your site doesn't have a site map, you are risking that the spider
won't crawl your whole site. Think about it. When a spider comes
crawling your home page, it keeps crawling by following links.
If a link is broken, it stops. However, if I have a link to a site
map from my home page and the site map has all my primary links on
it for my site, I just increased my chances of my site being crawled
from start to finish. Be sure the site map links back to your home
page.
I have seen some people try to tackle this problem by putting a
link for every page on their site on their home page. Wow, if you
have a 2000 page site, your home page is going to get awfully messy.
Instead, put your important links on your home page -- this includes
a link to your site map. On your site map, put all your links
to all your pages.
For example, if on one page I'm discussing the
topic, "K-1 process" I'll have a link on my site map pointing to
this page. Let's say this topic is 20 pages. Obviously, I have
a chain of links from the first page to the last page so both the
reader
and the spider can follow. The chain would go something like this:
index.htm -- site-map.htm -- K-1.htm --K-1-page2.htm -- K-1-page3.htm
and so on.
The K-1.htm -- K-1-page2.htm -- K-1-page3.htm, etc, all have links
pointing to my home page and site map.
Every page should have a link to your site map and home
page....again, every page on your site should have a link to
your site map and home page---again, every page on your site should
have a link to your site map and home page.
Notice on the
site map it is only necessary to put the primary link page (usually
the first page) that links to the other pages. If you want to list
all 20 pages that talk about the K-1 process on your
site
map you can but it is not necessary. Linking is a matter of common
sense and thinking like a search engine spider. If everything is
connected and somehow circles back to your home page, you are doing
your job. How do you make sure that happens -- again, every page
on your site should have a link to your site map and home page --
and your home page should always have a link to your site map.
Keep adding to your site map as you
add
pages.
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If you do all the above, you have a good chance of increasing
your ranking in search engines. You have to be consistent. By putting
foreign penpal in your title tag and not putting it in your description
tag isn't going to help you establish your primary keyword with
search engines. It is the sum of doing all of the above that tells
search engines what is your primary keyword. Granted, I have other
words scattered throughout my site that are secondary keywords,
but if I am going to find my niche, I will concentrate on at least
one good keyword to try to get ranked on. If I'm found on secondary
keywords, it's just icing on the cake. For example, my primary
keyword is Filipina Lady, however, people do find me on asian
lady, online dating service, filipina dating, filipina marriage,
etc.
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| Disclaimer. Any and all the tools and information here we are not responsible
for its use. I have used all safely, but I always backup a page or site
before using. |
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