Adding headers for SEO instead of merely adding headers to content of an article has caused a writer's block the size of the Great Wall of China. (Some exaggeration maybe, but I have been stuck on one dinky header since last Saturday, and am getting no where, except an increase ability to lose sleep now. )

Under the belief that there are forums and message boards for everything anyone could possibly be interested in, can anyone tell me where there is one that helps such situations -- sorta a self-imposed DIY SEO board that includes a section for brainstorming on how to stick in a few keywords in headers without making the SE gods angry?!

I suspect I could get help for this one incident on this board, however, knowing how quickly I got stuck, and facing how far I want to go, it's just not the nature of this board to have such a section, so I'm hoping others have already found where I need to go. The problem is creating a header. I already have my KWs, KW phrases, and long-tails, so Roget is no help this time.

If you can't think of any such places to get help, would you give me a string of words, with or without quotes, to try to google it? Thanks.

Hello,

Please take a look at http://dolphinscales.com/index.htm and you will get the idea of how to insert keywords in header which is also viable in terms of SEs.

For more information you can also reach me at pujagoyal21@gmail.com.

Thanks

pujagoyal wrote:

Hello,

Please take a look at http://dolphinscales.com/index.htm and you will get the idea of how to insert keywords in header which is also viable in terms of SEs.

For more information you can also reach me at pujagoyal21@gmail.com.

Thanks

How is looking at a site about scales going to give me ideas for a KW infused header to introduce a Teddy Bears' site?!

How about the header be just "Teddy Bears"?

Don't think that'll make the SE's angry, and you've got all the keywords you'll ever need. After that, you're trailing kw's can be developed in the linking profile, and bits of on-page text.

Are you trying to figure out what keywords you want to target or something?

I poked a stick at the term Teddy Bears, and it appears there has been some SEO for those top sites. Don't know how much work you're willing to put in for this, but I would think that you'd want to target a lesser term. On the other hand.... don't really matter what you do. You can change your targeting term just with the linking profile.

Are you trying to sell these bears, or is this just a story site? Fill me in....

pujagoyal, why would you want to do that? Your KW/phrase would have more weight if the title was not so diluted with repeat words.

If you take a look at how that is displayed in the SERPS, I don’t see how that would entice someone to click into your site. Does this Google result below look like something that would entice a prospective customer to click on it?

"Weighing Machines,Weigh Machines,Weigh Balances,Weighing Scales ... - 2:40pmDevi Shree Mudran Pvt. Ltd. - manufacturers weighing machines,suppliers weighing machines,wholesalers weighing machines,weigh machines,manufacturers weigh ...
your-url-was-here/ - 46k - Cached - Similar pages"

atwhatcost, just make the Titles and metas relative to the actual page, you will attract quality visitors and overtime do far better in the SERPS. pujagoyal, please dont suggest to others that they puke all over the metas like you did.

hehehe, the string is soo tight and long there is not even a space between any letter or punctuation.

Honestly, I've learned how to come up with the KWs, etc. I've learned that headers get noticed more by the bots, so placing KW's strategically in them is a good idea. The page I'm working on now, is merely the introduction/home page. In it, logically, should be the journalistic questions answered -- who, what, where and why? (When is too obvious) -- to tell what this site's about and why visitors want to explore it more, assuming they got there on purpose.

With that the who is Teddy Bear family; the what is this, their home online (aka Web Den, although it has no KWs in that answer, so that's where I'm stuck, for now); and the why is for stories, fun and games, which does feature a couple of shortened KWs, but I think I can muster a way of fitting a couple of the KWs in that sections header.

Apparently, some seem to think I need to learn my KWs and example of headers, even though that's not what I'm asking, and I know I've mentioned more then once that I know that information. I guess I need to prove it, here is my meta tag list, and the ones in bold are the KW phrases that I'm trying to give relevance to in the content (and hopefully in the headers):
teddy bear, teddy bears, Vermont Teddy Bears, teddy baer, teddy baers, Teddy Bear Picnic, Teddies, Stuffed Animals, Plush toys, Teddy Bear Stories, Free games online, Free kids games, Pooh Bear, Kids’ crafts, Family Friendly

By the very nature of the site, I have to cut back, as much as possible, the most obvious of KWs -- Teddy Bear -- since it comes up naturally quite often, and I'm not ever going to compete with the companies that win the top positions under that term.

I'd much rather find a message board that is more devoted to helping one another brainstorm headers for their sites, then have people here answer this one question I'm stuck on now, so, to reitterate -- does anyone know where such a site exist? And, if not, got any guesses on what words I can place in a search form that would capture such a site for me?

BUT, if you insist on answering the one question on my mind that prompts me to keep trying to get this question answered, might as well know the question, so you no longer need to guess it, too. Here's the current header and paragraph:

Why are we building a web den?
It’s our home online! We like sharing our lives by telling Teddy Bear stories and showing pictures of our many adventures. We enjoy a variety of fun activities. We also know many other plush toys, who come on the Internet to play, so we wanted of plenty room to play with these buddies and with you. Each area in our den will have pictures to see, tales to tell, and fun stuff to do like kids’ crafts and free kids’ game.

The header sucks! Doesn't have a single KW in it, once more a KW phrase. What's a better header for this section?

(And, again, please note, I'd rather have a message board full of people, who are actually trying to get this same kind of answer, so it can be ongoing help, and I can return the favor by helping others stuck for a good KW based header.)

Thank you.

Are we talking Headers, or Titles?

Don't get me wrong, but I think you might be over stressing it. (pleeeeeaaassee don't be mad )

Headings aren't worth a whole lot. Ok, MAYBE just a little. But not nearly as much as your links.
If we spend more than 10 minutes thinking of the headings, then we've tossed away about 8 minutes of our life. hahahah

If this is you're opening page, then think of the first thing that comes to mind. "On-Line Teddy Bear Den"... or whatever. Use your imagination. You want it to look natural, and not stuffed to the gills.... just like you already mentioned.

When dealing with code, lets make it esthetically pleasing to the bots. The visuals/reading will capture the reader, and the linking profile will take care of the rest.

Example - One of my sites ranks rather well for a product that I offer. But that text doesn't appear on my opening page. Might be in the meta-description tag, one time. But thats about it. Point is, the term is just kinda there... off to the side. The rest of the site is built with honesty, and no spam. However, the term in question IS used frequently but carefully on the actual page where that product exists, AND i've handled the linking profile to make sure I get some love for it.

So in you're case, I'd make the term 'Teddy Bears' part of your headings....and anything else being just surrounding text. Your other pages will focus the smaller terms much more tightly. K.I.S.S.

Why are we building a web den?
It’s our family friendly teddy bear home online! We like sharing our lives by telling Teddy Bear stories and showing pictures of our many adventures. We enjoy a variety of fun free kids games. We also know many other stuffed animals, who come on the Internet to find things to do including kids crafts. We wanted of plenty room to play with these buddies and with you. Each area in our den will have pictures to see, tales to tell, and fun stuff to do like kids crafts and free kids’ game.

Are we talking Headers, or Titles?

The Title (although it doesn't go easily with the over all theme of the site) is, "Teddy Bear Stories." (Also my three main KWs -- or my KW phrase for this site.) Same Title, every page, right?!

I'm aware that KW Phrases are noticed more with specialized formating (headers, italics, bold, underlined), so, although I've already added my 3 word phrase in the content occasionally, even if it doesn't count a whole lot, I've been learning that it is part of SEO and is part of the overall equation to get my site noticed by SEs.

Type in Teddy Bears, and Google comes back with 2,820,000 hits, and the first one has practically the same site name as mine, beating out the huge commerical bear chains. I know I have a chance at that spot some day, but not as a brand new site.

Teddy Bear Stories though "only" has 1,210,000 hits, less then half, and only two of the first page are commonly known amoung the teddy bear lovers community. Go for some of the smaller results, first, then work towards the Money Terms. There is a balance between going nuts over KW Phrases and being organic, but I only have three headers, short paragraphs, a table, and a few pictures on the home page -- just enough to give visitors enough info to decide if they want to chack out the rest. I want the headers to inform visitors what the paragraph is about, while unobnoxiously letting bots understand too.

Don't get me wrong, but I think you might be over stressing it. (pleeeeeaaassee don't be mad  )

LOL You don't have the personality to make me all that angry, and your incite is appreciated, because you don't always go with the majority. If I can't ultimately come up with THE header I've been knocking my head in to come up with, at least I won't feel as guilty, now that you've told me it's not essential.

Site,
Your response was appreciated too, but there's a big problem between KWs and a site about Teddy Bears. There isn't a plethora of synonyms for "Teddy Bears," so to avoid being considered spam, if I can include the phrase in the header, then I can skip it in the content, and keep the other minor KWs in there without making it real obvious.

Ack! Couldn't sleep tonight -- thinking I'm coming down with a cold, now -- so did some more writing. Now I feel that header is in my brain, hiding out, but it feels like it's coming, hopefull fairly soon.Maybe it's waiting for the cold to be over.

Still, a shame there isn't a message board that deals with website content writer's block.

Now, Lynn, my dear,

It's clear that this is getting on top of you. You are quite frustrated.

You are quite muddled up about a number of issues. You've misunderstood some things from the Gypsey's e-book and you are using the wrong terms for some things. You really need to make a nice cup of tea and relax for a bit. Then you need to unlearn a few things and start again from scratch.

If you will just steady up a bit on this KW stuff, I'm sure that you'll get some good help from the people who have already been trying to help you.

Now, I know that's a bit abrasive. Sorry about that. I'm not real good at being gentle. But that's how it is.

I'd really like to take you through the basic steps of planning your website. Others might do it better than I. I do think that the basic planning is where you have started to get off the rails. Then you've got onto this KW thing which you've got all up the spout.

I'm hoping that this strong talk will be helpful rather than inflamatory.

Best wishes,
Laurie.

Laurie,
Do you have kids? And, if you do and you're hollering at them, do they even notice? You have the mildest "strong talk" I've ever read. Who can get angry at such softness?! LOL

Yup, been reading Gypsy's book. It shows, huh? (Bet he wishes I never saw it. For those wondering, it's a good e-book, but some of us are extremely SEO challenged. ) And, just when I was thinking I'm getting it, you tell me I'm not. Ack! Good thing I'm not ready to load this page. (All this for a single page, that will only eventually become the complete "den.")

OK, by now the only things I'm sure of are that I have some keywords and my headers shouldn't look like the first examples provided to me. (Puja's, although, personally I think he/she was very nice to offer help. Obviously, it's very hard for some of us to understand all this stuff, even when we think we have.)

So, please, will someone just out-and-out tell me what info I "know" that I'm just simply wrong about, so I can gleen the good stuff given to me? Please make it really obvious, since I'm now battling (and losing) insomnia AND a cold, as well as obviously being SEO challenged.

Oh, Lynn, you're a Sweetie.

I came to the computer just now, having not long rolled out of bed, with some fear that I may have really done it this time.

I don't think your SEO challenged. In fact, I think you've got the most important ingredient, that is, you write stuff about your subject. I see your posts on the forum and they stick to the subject. You are a very focused person and that's what on-page SEO is about.

I think you've got so involved in trying so hard to get good rankings that you've lost sight of the simple art of just writing it how it is and run away with trying to manipulate one of the biggest things ever created by a team of men. Impossible!

So now: Get five blank sheets of paper. We're going to design a simple website with five pages as a training excersise. The rest will come from that. We won't have a sitemap, contact page, about us page or purchase page for now. Just a home page and four information/story pages.

Betta get a cuppa and we'll start.

First sheet of paper. Write HOME on top.

This page is special, some differences from the others but still many similarities. The home page is about what the whole site is about. It's an introduction to the site and the overall content and related subjects.

So what's the site about? Teddy Bear and Stuffed Animal Stories, Games and Crafts OK? So get that firmly in you mind! The site is about Teddy Bear and Stuffed Animal Stories, Games and Crafts, nothing more and nothing less.

So, if the site is about Teddy Bear and Stuffed Animal Stories, Games and Crafts, then the homepage is about Teddy Bear and Stuffed Animal Stories, Games and Crafts.

The file name for the home page must be index.htm or index.html. Nothing else will do.

Now, forget this term header, that you're using. It's throwing you off. The header is the top section of the page that may contain a logo, photo, heading, subheading, top nav, Google ads, your phone number............ OK? The header could also be called the banner or the top bit.

So, to get this working right from the point of view of you visitors and the SEs, which is the same point of view, we need to get what the home page is about, in the right places.

Firstly, the head section of your home page. (not the header)

<title>Teddy Bear and Stuffed Animal Stories, Games and Crafts</title>

<meta name="description" content="Family friendly website of Bear A, Bear B and Bear C, filled with delightful teddy bear stories, kids games, crafts, sewing patterns and teddy bear recipes, centering around the life of these cuddly stuffed animal toys" />

So, how's that? We've said what the site and the home page are about, and got some keywords in there as well. And of course, if you say what it's about, you can't help but use your keywords. Pretty good, I reckon! So write it down on your sheet of paper.

Next, the body section of the home page, the part the visitors see.

Search engineers are very clever people. They've set up their search engines to think like real people. Well, sort of.

So, the most important thing, needs to come first. What's the most important thing? What the site and the page is about. Teddy Bear and Stuffed Animal Stories, Games and Crafts So put it first. Make it your page heading

Now, if you make it h1, like this:

<h1>Teddy Bear and Stuffed Animal Stories, Games and Crafts</h1>

it will be big and stand out for your visitors, and the SEs will see by the h1 tag that it's the most important thing on the whole page. It's what your site and page are about, so it's got your main site keywords in it.

The next most important thing needs to come next. That's the subheading. Like the subheading, under the main headline in the news paper. That's the description from the head section. The subheading needs to be a little bit smaller than the heading, but still big enough to be eye catching and indicate that it's pretty important. The SEs also need to know that it's the second most important thing on the page. So give it the h2 tag, like this:

<h2>Family friendly website of Bear A, Bear B and Bear C, filled with delightful teddy bear stories, kids games, crafts, sewing patterns and teddy bear recipes, centering around the life of these cuddly stuffed animal toys</h2>

Now Lynn, we'll leave the home page for the minute.

The other pages are:
Kids Stories - Teddy Bear and Stuffed Animal
Kids Games - Teddy Bear and Stuffed Animal
Kids Crafts -  Teddy Bear and Stuffed Animal
Kids Recipes - Teddy Bear and Stuffed Animal

So, when you get to it later, on the Kids Stories page, your primary keyword will be Kids Stories and your secondary keyword will be  Teddy Bear and Stuffed Animal. Similar for the other pages. Get that written down on the remaining sheets of paper.

So, back to the home page.

Next thing after the h2 can be the top nav. Opinions may vary about this, but give this method a go. Works for me.

Along the top, under the subheading, you'll have a line of links to the other pages. Pretty obvious to your visitors and a clear indication to the SE that these words are important to the site as a whole. They'll be on each page.

The anchor text for each link will be the keyword of the page it links to, except that you've got to call the home page HOME (well, you don't have to) and give it the file name index.htm

So the third thing your visitors and the SEs see is HOME, KIDS STORIES, KIDS GAMES, KIDS CRAFTS, KIDS RECIPES. Got that down on your home page sheet of paper?

These are keywords for the home page because they are keywords for the whole site.

They serve to join the whole site together as one unit in the eyes of your visitors and of the SEs.

The keywords are hyperlinked to the other pages so the SEs know that they are an important part of the whole site as well as individual pages. To explain: the anchor text is the word used in the link. This should be a keyword for the page it links to.

Well, that's got a fair bit done, Lynn. Let's call that the end of the header. It will repeat, on each page, with a unique heading and subheading.

Next we come to the main content.

About 150 words would be nice. Between 50 and 250 would be OK.

You need to give an introduction to each of the the following four pages.

Subheading, h3 this time. Just not quite so important. Include your keyword.

<h3>Bear A, Bear B and Bear C Tell Kids Stories of their Adventurers</h3>

Then about 30 to 50 words of ordinary text about the bears, their adventurers and their story telling style, whatever introduces your visitor to the following pages. Whatever you give your visitors, following this pattern, will be fine with the SEs because that's how the clever search engineers designed them.

Use the words kids stories and childrens stories interchangeably.

Use the bears names.

Use the titles of their adventure stories.

So, get that down on your paper and repeat the process on the home page, for the other three pages.

Well, I reckon that's enough for today for a lady with a cold and who didn't sleep too well last night. Let's know how you go with it, and when you're ready to proceed. We still need to work on the footer, but that's not such a big job. Then we can get on to the other pages.

Please note that we are doing our on-page SEO as part of the site design, as we go along. In simple terms, and that's where you need to be, that's all there is to it.

So Lynn, I do want to encourage you to forget the complicated stuff you've been trying to get your head around and simply write for ordinary people, giving them information organised in an orderly fashion.

Probibly time for another cuppa by this.

Best wishes,
Laurie.

Laurie,
Thanks for the help. Good to know I'm not totally out of touch with the concept. Problem now is the cold has depleted what little brain I have left. Driving me nuts(ier)! I want to play at the site, but my brain just sounds like white noise and refuses to cooperate.

I will return, whenever the brain does. LOL

Sounds good to me. (about getting back later)

Sugest you have some honey and lemon juce and go to bed with a hot water bottle.

Best wishes,
Laurie.

I'm so glad you all are having this discussion.  I am a beginner with all this - so a step-by-step process is awesome!

Sorry to jump in on your thread - just appreciating your misery.  Get well soon  :-)
BasketLady

Ah, G'day BasketLady. Welcome to the forum.

Great little website you have there. Build it yourself?

You have a good grasp of several of the stratergies of basic SEO. Very well geotargeted.

There are other SEO principles that you could stand to brush up on, a bit. One will become clear as soon as Lynn gets over the dog's disease and we get on with the level two pages.

In comon with Lynn, you need some tuition on resizing and optimising your images. And you're in luck! It just happens that I wrote an article on the weekend, on the very subject, for a site of our own ColoEagle. It's not on the page yet, but he'll put it on his "Images" page shortly. http://www.welcometothecommunity.com/

Feel free to chime in on the discussion. We're building a practice site, rather than a site to be published.

At some later stage you may wish to submit your site for a site review and get some design advice as well as some more advanced SEO sugestions from the gurus. They may even chime in here.

The key is to keep comunicating.

Regards,
Laurie.

Thanks Laurie,

Yeah, I built most of it myself - I know it is really obvious, lol.  I have actually been working this morning on optimizing the jpgs on my Samples page,   even added a table  (boy, I'm really showing how much of an amateur I am) 

After reading your posts yesterday - I'm seriously considering adding the navigation bar towards the top of each page - now, if I could just work all that out in my head!  And of course, find the time, lol.

Can't wait to see your next 'tutorial".  And the "images" discussion!

BasketLady

G'day BasketLady.

Great to see you back. One often gets dissapointed by new people who don't return, and so new members sometimes don't get much help till they show they're for real.

Here's the code for  a table for your navigation:

<table border="1" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="2" align="center">

<tr>

  <td align="center">

  <!--Cell at 1 row, 1 column-->

  </td>

  <td align="left">

  <!--Cell at 1 row, 2 column-->

  </td>

  <td align="left">

  <!--Cell at 1 row, 3 column-->

  </td>

  <td align="left">

  <!--Cell at 1 row, 4 column-->

  </td>

  <td align="left">

  <!--Cell at 1 row, 5 column-->

  </td>

</tr>

</table>

Everywhere that it says:

<!--Cell at 1 row, 1 column--> etc.

remove it completely and put your link in there. I see you've had quite a bit of trouble getting your text in the correct place in the code on your site.

Where it says: 

<td align="center">

in the first table cell, that's correct. Change the rest from align left to aligh center.

When you've got it all working nicely, change the table border from 1 to 0. That will make the line border go away. It should look much more sophisticated.

You also need some help with getting the font tags and p tags right. I'll help you with that if you wish.

That's:

<font></font> and <p></p>

Here's a tutorial that was most helpful to me when I first started out: http://www.htmlgoodies.com/primers/basics.html

Regards,
Laurie.