While surfing Google the other day, I noticed that many of the sites that showed up at the top of the search results used keywords somewhere in the URL. For example, if you go to Google and search on web hosting, 8 out of the top 10 sites have the keywords 'web hosting' appear in either the domain name or page name.

In an effort to improve the visibility of some of my sub-pages, I decided to follow suite. So I renamed several pages on my own site using targeted keywords. For example, I renamed Design.aspx to WebDesign.aspx and Hosting.aspx to WebHosting.aspx. I then added a 303 redirect for the original pages just in case there are any external links pointing to them.

I then updated my Google sitemap using GSiteCrawler and resubmitted the map to Google. I will let you know how I make out in a few weeks.

As I mentioned in another post, each page within a website should target a specific keyword(s). So in my case, I did just that: targeted specific keywords on each of my sub pages. Afterwards, I re-generated my sitemap using GSiteCrawler (an great free tool) and resubmitted the sitemap to Google using Google’s webmaster tools.

So the other day, I decided to see which of my site pages where indexed with Google using the search term site:laneware.net. To my surprise, all of my website sub pages that showed up on the results page had the old keywords associated with them.

I am not sure if or when Google would re-index the sub pages, so I decided to instead manually submit the pages one at a time (as there where just a few of them). Long story short, if you absolutely have to have a page indexed, do no rely on Google’s sitemap feature.

With my website optimized, I have moved on to the next step: building backlinks.

Everything that I have read says that quality backlinks are the key to good search engine rankings. Although based on my keyword density and PR findings (see Real World SEO - Keyword Density & Rage Rank), I am begining to question the validity of this belief. In any event, I have started submitting laneware.net to varous web hosting, web design, and regional website directories.

Using the Google's "intitle" search parameter (i.e. intitle:directory hosting), I've found an ample supply if web directories to post to. Most of the sites I have come across so far have added my website link for free and provided a 24-48 hour turnaround. My goal is to post to 3-4 directories a day, which has been doable thus far.

Building backlinks is without a doubt the most boring part of the SEO process. But the worst part is it could take several months to reap the rewards as it will take time for Google to spider all of the directories I am posting to and "credit" my website for the backlink. I will keep you posted and let you know how it goes.

Looking for some ideas for further optimizing my website's keywords, I decided to take a look at the page rank (PR) and keyword density of the top 10 sites that show up in Google SERPS using various search terms that relate to website hosting. To my surprise, one of the sites that showed up in the top 10 list was not even a web hosting company. In fact the site is a personal website containing family photos, etc.

With my interest peaked, I decided to take a look at the PR of the website in question. Again, to my surprise, there was no PR. The other sites on the SERPS ranked somewhere between 4-5, which is what I expected. I then took a look keyword density of this rogue site and found the density for hosting related terms to be very, very low. The only reason the hosting related terms even appear on the site is because the website owner mentions his ISP.

Moral of the story: Don't spend a whole lot of time worrying about keyword density or page rank.

This is the first installment of a series of posts relating to a real world SEO campaign that my company is currently undergoing. Track the progress of laneware.net's search engine rankings as we employ a variety of SEO techniques.

Well I've decided to finally sit down and spend some time trying to improve laneware.net's search engine rankings. The first place I started was with the keywords. I spent some time identifying the keyword phrases and incorporating them into the website.

Now laneware.net is a web hosting company. Being a realist, I knew that I didn't stand a chance showing up in the SERPS using broad keyword phrases such as "web hosting" and such. So I narrowed my keyword selection down by taking a more regional approach. Some of the keywords/phrases I decided to focus on include "buffalo web hosting", "buffalo asp.net hosting", "buffalo web design", etc.

With keywords in hand, I employed the following SEO techniques:

• Setup each web page to target a specific set of keywords.
• Included the keywords in the page header and description tags. 
• Made sure that the pages contained the keywords in the page content. 
• Used anchor links to internal pages where possible. 
• Used keywords in the H1 tags.

Once I had everything in place, I submitted the site to Google for indexing. A few days later, the website changes showed up on Google's SERPS. So how did I fair? Well I did a search for buffalo web hosting and laneware.net's home page showed up on page 5 in the results. That's pretty good considering the website didn't show up at all for those search terms prior to the keyword optimization. But then again, page 5? Who would ever find the site? So it looks like I still have work to do which is to be expected.