HOW TO CREATE SEO ORGANICALLY - PART TWO

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Submitted Date 10/19/2019
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By now some of you might be wondering what is my expertise on this subject matter? Why would I be writing about this now when there is so much information on the interwebs about SEO?

Back in 1990, I started a one-person company specializing in the installation and isolation of ceiling-mounted surgical microscopes. Soon I had to start dealing with international optics companies, structural engineers, architects, hospital administrators, microscope sales reps and surgeons.

By 1994 I knew that Mittmount had to become a presence on the internet. In 1996 I had the Mittmount website built by a company in Knoxville that used Adobe's PageMill to make the site. In the summer of 1997, I started to study what SEO was all about and having my website creator add in some new factors. In 1998 I took over my website and started using PageMill myself to edit and add to the site.

Back then there was a lot of theory to search engine optimization as it all had not been proven out yet. Even still today, SEO is an ever ongoing situation of the factors changing and other new factors added. However, most of the strongest organic factors for SEO are just as relevant today as they were two decades ago.

The last SEO Factor that I wrote about was "Content Is King" and that one factor alone might forever be the most important of all the many factors.

How Do You Rank?

SEO Factor #3 = The Big Three

The URL, Title and the Body.

Of the Big Three, the least that I will spend time on in Part Three is the Body simply because it is covered as the content of the website.

It is the URL that is the very first thing that the search engines see and evaluate. So many domain names being used for websites in this day and age have no SEO factors included whatsoever.

Every website should have at least one domain with a URL that speaks first to the search engines. Even if that URL is a secondary, parked domain used for SEO purposes. (I will explain this factor at length in a future chapter.)

Yes, for the main website many times it is best to have a domain that is as short as possible and reflecting the company's name, but usually, this is not so good for the SEO factoring.

Will Your Website Make It To The Top?

One thing to remember when dealing with your long string URLs and domain names, for the web viewers those URLs are merely links that are hopefully going to be clicked and they don't have to be remembered. That is what the short domain name is for.

When buying long string domain names keep in mind that the domain name can have up to a total of 63 characters which include letters, numbers, and dashes with no spaces. Be wise with these domains and include as many keywords and phrases as you can with 63 characters.

Here's a special tip!

If you have more than three words in the domain name or URLs, then separate each word with a dash.

Why?

Because then the search engines will read the string as separate, meaningful words rather than just a mess of characters. When creating your long string URL links do not use underscores, but rather always use dashes! Using an underscore in a situation like this is saying "join these two words together" which is exactly what you want to avoid.

Whenever I make a website, I start from scratch using a blank, white page and a web editor that allows me to add many SEO factors that are not so easy to implement with the CMS type website editors. This would be the likes of Wix, Squarespace, Weebly, WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and all of those with a complicated backend that the websites cannot run without.

The SEO Wizard says you need SEO, more SEO!

I believe that these backends can interfere with the search engines quickly accessing the real content of the webpages and that by using static webpages you can feed more SEO factors more quickly to the search engines.

Words that should be included in long string URLs are keywords, locations, catchphrases, phone numbers that would help satisfy that the search engines are going to the most relevant of domains.

Once you have gotten past the character length rule of domains, the rest of the URL string can be as long as you please. Here's how I do it.

This is another special tip!

Directories! Or folders, if you will.

The front or main webpage of the website sits in the "root" of the website's server space. You would then create a directory or series of directories beneath the main page, one inside another. This is where all your other webpages will reside. In other words, you will be drilling down from the root to get to these folders.

Depending on what your web editor allows will determine how long each directory's name can be. For my web editor, Freeway Pro 7, the maximum is 127 characters. I will sometime nest all the webpages three folders down, using almost all the 127 character limit for each directory.

Remember that these long URLs are only going to be used as links for the viewers, so it is no biggie, but for the search engines, it is a big factor and it is the first factor that they see. They don't even have to see the actual URL link, just an icon, button or image to click onto.

 

 

SEO Directory Instructional Animated GIF

In the animated GIF above you can see one of my client's websites as it looks on my web editor Freeway Pro 7. You can see how each webpage has a very long, well named URL. All the words you see for the directories and the webpages within them are used as part of the URL.

That brings us to the Title, the second of the Big Three. It is quite surprising to me how many so-called "webmasters" don't know this simple but very important SEO factor. The search engines consider the title of each webpage to be prime meat of their quick analysis and therefore the titles should be relevant to the content of that webpage.

You see so many websites with webpage titles with just a word or two that is nearly useless to the search engines, things like | Home | or | About | or | Services | Contact.

My goodness! They just starved off one of the Big Three by making that feeble attempt of titling!

It has been debatable for years as to what is the maximum amount of characters to have in a title before the rest of them are usually ignored by the search engines. There is also some talk that this amount might vary for the different search engines themselves.

The Google SERPs will show up to 70 characters, so this is the number that I would recommend maxing out on. You can use more and not get penalized for it, they simply might not be used by the search engines.

Lightning Mobile SERP

Above are examples of SERPs when you search for one of my clients.

It is so very important to keep the words that you use in your titles as well-defined as that in the content of that web page. Do not keep using the same set of words in the titles of all your webpages! Don't have duplicate web page titles.

You must keep it 100% relevant as possible and each webpage should be unique in its content, title, and URL.

After the front or main webpage of a business website, there is usually no reason to have the name of the company used again in any of the titles of the webpages. Unless the business name is very relative as in prime keywords, it is not a good idea more than once.

Carefully consider what the content of that particular webpage boils down to and use those words for the title of that webpage.

Lastly, also write the title so they make sense to the viewer, because should your webpage get listed by the search engines, the title will be seen by the viewers and they might choose the webpage with the most relevant title.

SEO = Search Engine Optimization

The Big Three all sound simple enough to follow, but if you just look at many websites, at least two of these Big Three rules of thumb are missing.

I think you will find that most of the SEO Factors I talk about are not complicated to pull off, they just might take time in preparing for them, as well as creating them, it might be tedious at times too, but it isn't that complicated to do well.

I personally believe that a true, real webmaster first and foremost knows organic SEO. Secondly that they can make a website without having to use a damned template. And especially a template they did not make on their own. There's becoming less and less of the true webmasters remaining in the world now it seems.

For those that can only make a website using someone else's templates and if you cannot make a website from scratch, starting with a blank, white page, PLEASE DO NOT CALL YOURSELF A WEBMASTER!

You can find How To Create SEO Organically Part One here: https://www.writespike.com/story/EYTJ4GMt5SYP/how-to-create-seo-organically-part-one

You can find How To Create SEO Organically Part Three here: https://www.writespike.com/story/VumXBOliomc2/how-to-create-seo-organically-part-three-static-vs-dynamic-websites

You can find How To Create SEO Organically Part Four here: https://www.writespike.com/story/IiosLw5XjgZT/how-to-create-seo-organically-part-four-sitemaps-and-submitting-to-bing-google

You can find How To Create SEO Organically Part Five here: https://www.writespike.com/story/QQJCrnZl8JUD/how-to-create-seo-organically-part-five-linking-internally-and-backlinking

You can find How To Create SEO Organically Part Six here: https://www.writespike.com/story/nMfgQ0rPr7Cq/how-to-create-seo-organically-part-six-google-vs-the-other-search-engines

You can find How To Create SEO Organically Part Seven here: https://www.writespike.com/story/FVSDj8vhjAoH/how-to-create-seo-organically-part-seven-what-you-cannot-see-can-hurt-you-or-gimme-more-head

As a reference and as just a simple example of backlinking, you can also find all my "How To Create SEO Organically" articles listed here: https://how-to-create-seo-organically.com/

Should you need SEO advice and analysis and/or a static website loaded with all my SEO factors please leave me a message here. I also can be found at https://www.upwork.com/fl/rgator

Don't Monkey Around With Your SEO!

Comments

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  • Jason 4 years, 4 months ago

    Instead of purchasing long form domain names for each service would it also work with having long form subdomain? eg https://service-city.xyz.com

    • Robert Mitton 4 years, 4 months ago

      In my opinion, absolutely NOT!!! Think about it, why would this even be comparable? It is not! What I am talking about is let's say buying ten separate keyword/phrase loaded domains and you have those surrounding the main website, all linking together. So to the search engines, these are all separate legitimate websites, all related to each other not only by linking but by matching the content. They are all separate entities on the net. This is the opposite of using subdomains!!! If you were to try to do the same with ten subdomains, they would all be within the same main domain and the search engines sort of laugh and scoff at subdomains for good reason. Only make a subdomain when one is truly needed. In 22+ years I have never found the need to use a subdomain! Don't be cheap yourself! Buying a few extra domains is an excellent and very inexpensive way to create solid backlinking. It is easy to see the difference to the search engines. First, draw a big circle and name it "main site" and then draw ten circles surrounding the main site circle. Name each of those as a satellite. Now draw another large circle and name is main site#2. Now draw ten smaller circles and cram them all inside the main site#2 circle. Which looks more attractive to the search engines?

    • Robert Mitton 4 years, 4 months ago

      If you are buying domains regularly, I suggest using Godaddy's special domain purchasing plan. I have been buying domains via this plan for years now it creates a savings of nearly $1000.00 per year, but then again I was dealing with hundreds of domains. https://www.godaddy.com/domains/discount-domains.aspx

    • Robert Mitton 4 years, 4 months ago

      Now keep in mind that my article here is about creating a special type of backlinking in which I am STACKING THE DECK. The purpose is quite clear, I want as many of my various webpages listed on the first page of search results. The idea is to push your competition off the first page of results! I have done this before where I have had eight to ten of my webpages all listed on the first page of results! Why does this happen? Because the search engines see each website as a separate entity with very related content and links between the two, so they are both valid to list. Whereas you have the same webpages as subdomains, it just looks like confusion to the search engines and you would be lucky if more than one gets listed. For the last dozen years or more, it has been all about stacking the deck and it works each and every time!

    • Robert Mitton 4 years, 4 months ago

      READ THE BOTTOM COMMENT FIRST AND WORK YOUR WAY UP TO HERE! First, you make your main website as strong as possible SEO wise, without subdomains, just make normal webpages with excellent SEO, use subfolders, no subdomains. On the main website, make a strong separate webpage for each service. Once you have made the main site as solid as possible SEO wise, then you create a separate domain for each service, using content that does not plagiarize your main website\'s pages. You create a strong few sentences or a paragraph to introduce each link, both on the main website and the satellites, linking back and forth. When done correctly, there is no better form of backlinking that can be done!

    • Robert Mitton 4 years, 4 months ago

      Lastly, I would recommend staying away from the minor registrar players like https://gen.xyz/about This one looks very questionable to me! Yeah, Godaddy has some bad politics, but they do have the best control panels to work with, have been around nearly two decades and in the long run are less expensive than most all the rest. A decade ago no other registrar could compare to GoDaddy as far as control panels go, but now the others are catching up. I would recommend NOT to do your web hosting through them though.

    • Jason 4 years, 4 months ago

      Thanks for your detailed response. Makes more sense when you talk about stacking the deck. Forgive my ignorance but what is the difference between what you are describing and a private blog network (just trying to understand)? I'm merely a small service-based business owner making my own website so don't feel that purchasing extra domains is warranted, Ill just work harder on my one site I guess!

    • Robert Mitton 4 years, 4 months ago

      With a blog network, you are sharing the domain space with others which does not carry as much ranking weight as a separate website for one subject purpose. At $8.47 per .com, purchasing domains is one of the best SEO investments one can make (my price at Godaddy for all .com purchases and renewals). The whole idea is the search engines are looking for the webpage that has the most relevance to that search query, which is why I stress The Big Three! (part two) I have not published the article that will describe in detail how parked domains can be made to look like a website to search engines, a neat trick I learned about 15 years ago. I suggest that you might want to read all the articles because it is solid old school SEO methods that are still just as valid today as they were back then, if not more so.