You need to know some Google advanced searches when doing SEO, this will help you check out the competition, find link building opportunities and give you a better knowledge of how the search engines work.
Once you know the basic searches you will find that some advanced searches can really help you speed up some processes while searching on the World Wide Web.
With each search I explain an example of how these searches could be used for your benefit.
The first thing you should know is that to the left of Google’s search box there is a link that says advanced searches. This is a useful tool that can be used for many things.
The Basic Google Searches
The basic search is what every one does every single day and that is to type a word or phrase into Google. This is the most important search of all because this is the only search that most people know. If you have a website or webpage based on a topic like for example monster balloons then when they type monster balloons into Google you want to be in the top 10 if possible.
What this search does is if you type in a word or two or how ever many Google will bring back results that have those words scattered over a page. If keywords were the only SEO element that search engines measured their results on then webpages with the words together would come higher than a webpage with the words scattered. So keeping your keyword phrases together while doing SEO Copy Writing is very important and gives you a little extra boost in search results.
This search is best used for checking out the competition when you are planning a webpage on a paticular Long Tail Keyword. If you were planning on building a webpage based on monster balloons you can type that phrase in and see how many webpages you are up against, how good the competition is.
As you can see 3 million and 160 thousand webpage’s have the words monster and balloons within thier content. This is how much competition you are up against. It can also be used once you have built your page to see where your webpage stands in the results if you do not have software to do this for you.
The next search is a simple process where you put speech quotations either side of your keywords. This will bring back results of webpage’s that only have the exact keyword phrase you entered. It will eliminate words being scattered over webpages.
Enter this below
"monster balloons"
As you can see only 86,800 webpages actually have the two words together, so if you know that people are searching for this term and you keep the words together in your copywriting then you have an advantage over all those other websites that have the words scattered.
The Google Advanced Searches
When doing searches in Google, Google ignores common words like and, at, where, how and other common digits. If you search for how to find cheap holidays google will ignore the how to part of the keywords you entered and bring back results for find cheap holidays.
If you want Google to include common words or digits enter a plus sign infront.
If you were looking for Star Wars 7 it would bring back results for just star wars.
If you want to search for keywords and related keywords to the keyword you entered put a (~) if front of it.
If you wanted to search the term money and related keywords this would search for keywords like financial and currency.
~money
Say you want to search for skiing holidays but not in Switzerland.
Skiing holidays -switzerland
The minus removes that word from your search results
Not sure what something means, type this in
define:seo
To make the search engines return results on two different search terms just add an uppercase OR between the two search terms.
link partners OR resources
Some great searches below for you when you are link building. Just replace the word keyword with your main keyword.
"keyword directory"
"keyword search engine"
"keyword" links.html
"keyword" resources.html (You can replace the .html with other file extensions like .htm, .shtm, .shtml, .cfm, and .php.
"Keyword" + "add a url"
"keyword" + "add link"
"keyword" + "add a link"
"keyword" + "add site"
"keyword" + "add a site"
"keyword" + "suggest link"
"keyword" + "suggest site"
Use your imagination, there are many different searches you can do to find links.
Search within someones website, you could search link building within this website and get results.
link building site:seomoz.com
Searches That Evalute Your Website
To check that your website is free from filtering issues type this into Google.
yourdomain.com
If you come out at number one then you are ok.
Want to know which of your webpages Google has decided are the most important, by doing the below will rank them in order from the strongest to the weakest.
Type into Google
www site:yourdomain.com
Find webpage’s that link to a website, Google only normally shows up webpages that are page rank 4 or more.
link:www.yourdomain.com
Last of all see how many webpage’s in your website has been indexed by google. (Do not be worried if Google doesn’t display all your backlinks, Google only provides the most pertinents links.)
site:yourdomain.com
If there are none then your website is very new or could have some problems. Build more incoming links to your website.