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Getting More Targeted Internet Traffic to Your Web Site
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is an area that is very misunderstood. It is not just word frequency and word density and a lot of links, it's an ongoing strategy to get and keep a good position of the major search engines AND to get other quality traffic to your Web Site.
One of the hardest things to do is get traffic to your web site. With thousands of new sites coming online every week it is easy to get lost in the crowd. I am attempting here to put you in the top 10% of the mix by showing you the basics of Search Engine Optimization or SEO as we in the trade call it.
You will learn about meta tags, links, titles, descriptions, robots.txt and robots Meta tags and a wealth of other information to get you started. This course will grow as I have more time to devote to it, but rest assured if you follow these simple guidelines you will not get banned from the search engines and you will be way ahead of the normal web site.
This is a very BASIC course and is intended for the beginner and not the serious SEO professional. It starts very slow and moves on from there. Even if you are familiar with these basic topics, please read through the next couple pages and things will move at a faster pace when I post Part 2.
Why am I doing this, well I do SEO consulting and would hope that you would call me for any SEO needs that you have.
Search Engine Optimization Part 1 - The Basics
Page 1
This Section of the SEO, Search Engine Optimization Course covers editing your page with WordPad or Notepad, Downloading and using an FTP program to transfer Search Engine Enhanced Web Pages to your Internet Domain and where to look to place those Internet Pages.
Editing your page.
Most web pages are made in either standard html format or using php. They are usually named accordingly, such as index.html or php.html
Usually people create these pages with any number of programs but for the most part they can be edited using the standard Notepad program that is included with Microsoft Windows.
To open notepad for the beginner
1. Go to the START BUTTON on your Task Bar - usually located at the bottom left side of your screen
2. Click it and a menu will appear
3. One on the options will be Programs or All Programs depending upon your Windows Version
4. Click the Programs option and another menu will appear.
5. You will see an option called ACCESSORIES click that
6. One of the options there will be Notepad. Click that and open it.
Now you are ready to edit a file on your website. But first lets figure out how to find your files and to load them into your server.
You will need an FTP program something like WS-FTP FTP means File Transfer Protocol. It is how you move a web page you create on your own PC at your house to the server that holds your website so the world can see it. I will give instructions on using it but most of the FTP programs work in a similar manner.
To get WS-FTP just go to: WS FTP
You can download a copy of WS-FTP Pro there. I recommend downloading the free version and then if you find yourself using it a lot buy the full version.
Basically all you do is start the program. On the left side of the program screen is your local hard drive. Once we get it set up then the right side will show your server where your web page resides.
To get started you will need to know a few pieces of information. You can easily get this information from whoever hosts your website.
This is the information you will need:
1. Your site host name or IP address. This will normally be your domain name like xyz.com
2. Your user name assigned to you by your hosting company
3. The password your host company assigned to you for FTP
4. Where on their server your site is located. This is a directory that contains the actual web pages that people see.
5. The default page name for the main site page people first see when they come to your website. This will usually be index.html or index.htm or index.php or default.htm or something similar to that.
Just email them and they will send you that information.
OK now we have notepad up and running, we have downloaded and installed WS-FTP on your local machine and we have the information back from your hosting company. We are now ready to set up the WS--FTP program to talk to your website.
1. Start the WS-FTP program
2. Click the CONNECT button
3. A Series of forms will come up. The first 2 need 2 pieces of information:
a. Site Profile Name. I usually just put in my domain name here. It is just for your own reference so you know what site you are going to the next time you need to do some work on your website. I have several hundred sites and naming it the same as the domain name seems to make life a bit easier.
b. Host Name or IP Address: Once again just enter your domain name like xyz.com
4. Click the FINISH button. A new series of blank spaces will appear for you to fill in.
a. UserID this is the user name you received from your host.
b. Password Again this you should have received from your hosting company
c. Save Password Check this block so the program remembers your password for the next time you need it.
d. SAVE This saves all the information that you just entered.
5. Now lets test it by clicking on the connect button. It should take a few seconds and then log into your server. Watch for any errors that occur so that you can recheck what you typed in or be able to email your hosing company with what error you got so that they can see what the problem is. The next time you log in you will just need to highlight the domain name on the left side of the WS-FTP screen and then click connect.
6. Once you have connected to your site you will want to go into the directory where the web pages reside. The hosting company should have emailed you that information but if for some reason they didn't it is usually one of the following: WEB, WWW, HTTPDOCS, HTDOCS, If you can’t seem to find it email your hosting company again and let them tell you exactly how they have their system structured so that you can get into the site pages.
GO TO PAGE 2
REMEMBER LINKS SHOULD ALWAYS BE BLUE!
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