Archive for the SEO Articles Category
On Page SEO Tips
October 15, 08 by admin.
It requires a lot of effort in designing and building a site, but it can be all in vain if you can’t attract enough traffic towards it. You put all your efforts in an attractive design of your website and the next step you do is to put it in front of the online world.
You can’t get success only by uploading your website on the www; the target is to attract well-qualified visitors towards your website, which can’t be done unless you put your site in the eyes of the search engines.
Today, all of the internet users use search engines to find the site relevant to their interest. For example, if a person is interested in finding information about on-going and up-coming cricket events, he/she can easily do so by typing in the keywords in Google, Yahoo or any other search engine. The search engine, as a result, will present a list of most relevant websites on the basis of their keyword. So, in short, to get more traffic towards your website, make it more optimized and put all efforts into keeping your website in the eye of the search engine. This traffic is, without any doubt, the life of a business. No e-business can run without adequate traffic.
How to optimize your website for search engines?
There are two ways of doing it.
* Off Page Search Engine Optimization
* On Page Search Engine Optimization.
This article will focus on the tips useful for On Page Search Engine Optimization.
All search engine optimization techniques are usually classified into On Page Optimization Techniques and Off Page Optimization Techniques. Both help in achieving one common goal; to get higher ranks in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).
Useful On Page SEO Tips
Following are some of the most common tips for better On Page Search Engine Optimization:
The most important word; The Keyword: it is always suggested that before you upload your website, put all your efforts into the keywords since users will be using keywords to find websites of their interest. Each page of your website should be treated as a separate entity having its own title and targeted keywords.
Always try to name your webpage files starting with your targeted keyword like crickethome.htm etc. For instance, if your website is about Telescopes then the title of each of your webpage should always start with the word Telescope and name each webpage file starting with word Telescope like Telescopereview.htm because the search engine robots look at filenames.
Always remember that you have to make your website attractive for the human visitors as well as for search engine robots. Attractiveness for both of them can be achieved through better keyword optimization.
You should keep in mind the keyword density and never over-optimize your web page. It is not necessary that the greater the optimization level of your web page the better it will be.
Title Tags are considered to be one of the most important factors of On Page Optimization. You can say in other words that it is mandatory for you to include the main keyword as part of your title.
You should always use Header tags with lots of care. Most of the SEO experts recommend having a single H1 header tag that should contain the main Keyword in order to attract human visitors as well as the search engine robots. Other H2 tags can contain secondary keywords.
Putting the main keyword in the URL is always beneficial in the eyes of the search engines. Most of the users are usually not bothered with that but it will help in better SEO. If it is not possible to include the complete keywords or a phrase in the URL then try at least to include the most important keyword in the URL.
There are many more On Page SEO tips but the above mentioned tips are the most common and recommended by experts. You can add additional features on your website to make it more Search Engine Optimized, for instance, adding blog sections, feedback areas, guestbooks etc.
About the Author: Colm Byrne has been working in the SEO arena for 4 years now and runs a blog to give tips on Internet Marketing and how to do Ethical Link building. His numerous articles provide a wonderfully researched resource.
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How Many Keywords Are Enough?
August 28, 08 by admin.
By Karon Thackston (c) 2008, All Rights Reserved
Yesterday, I receíved an email from someone who’d purchased one of my ebooks. Her question was one I’ve been asked several times before: “How many instances of keywords within the copy are enough?” That’s like asking, “How long is a piece of string?” There isn’t one answer. Proponents of keyword density formulas will quickly spout out a percentage: 4%, 6%, 12%. However, I wonder where they get these figures from. If you do a search in Google for any keyphrase (say [cast iron frying pan], for example), you’ll immediately see why keyword density formulas don’t add up. Either version - cast iron or cast-iron - bring the same listings on the search engine results pages (SERPs). Please note: I was looking at the source code for each page so as to include mentions in tags as well as on the page.
Cast Iron Frying Pan
Your results may be different than what I see, as everybody does not view results from the same database. But, when I type in [cast iron frying pan] (no brackets, of course), the first site that comes up is http://whatscookingamerica.
Next up, Ask Yahoo: http://ask.yahoo.com/20000419.
In the #3 position is Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/Lodge-
Mexico Cruise Vacation
Here’s another example: [Mexico cruise vacatíon]. At #1 we see Cruise Web, http://www.cruiseweb.com/
eCruises.com is up next with their page found at http://www.ecruises.com/. Total word count: about 238. Keyword density for [Mexico cruise vacatíon]: < 1%. Keyword density for [Mexico cruise]: < 1%. Keyword density for [cruise vacatíon]: 0%.
It goes on and on. Yes, you do find some sites that have really high keyword densities, but it is not a given that attaining a certain across-the-board keyword density will guarantee you good success. In fact, from what I’ve seen, keyword density has not been a valid measure of SEO copywriting success in years. I believe it once was, but Google and other engines quickly plugged the loophole.
Does Frequency Not Count At All?
Does that mean that engines don’t give any consideration to how often keyphrases are used within the copy? No. In fact, The Official Google Blog recently did a series entitled Technologies Behind Google Ranking.
In one of the posts, the author states, “The core technology in our ranking system comes from the academic field of Information Retrieval (IR). The IR community has studied search for almost 50 years. It uses statistical signals of word salience, like word frequency, to rank pages.” He continues with, “IR gave us a solid foundation, and we have built a tremendous system on top using links, page structure, and many other such innovations.”
Other Google documents make mention of the need to include key terms in your copy, so it is established that keywords in copy can play an important role. However, I do not see evidence that a standard, across-the-board “keyword density” is at play. Not to mention, forcing phrases into your page text to the point that it sounds utterly stupid makes no sense. It’s not going to help your rankings (except maybe on some sub-engines), and it will almost certainly turn off your site visitors.
So, back to the original question: “How many keyphrases are enough?” That’s a judgment call that comes with experience. Here are a few guidelines - not carved-in-stone rules - but guidelines you can consider. And no, don’t do them all every time.
Keyword Inclusion Guidelines
1) I make an effort to include keyphrase(s) in the headlines and sub-heads if at all possible.
2) Adding keyphrases about once or twice per paragraph is a good goal. I never count words or run keyword density percentages.
3) Focus on writing in natural language. Yes, you want to incorporate keywords, but not to the point that you ruin your copy. It should sound natural.
4) Read your copy out loud. If it sounds stupid or redundant to you, it will sound stupid and redundant to your site visitor.
5) If it makes sense to do so, I try to include keyphrase(s) in bold, italic, bulleted lists, or in other text that is specially formatted. If you wouldn’t bold or italicize the words or phrases to emphasize them to your visitors, however, don’t make a special exception for the engines. These are what I call Brownie point tactics. The impact won’t be significant, but every little bit helps.
Bottom line? Don’t sacrifice the quality and conversion power of your copy to chase search engine rabbits. In the end, it won’t be worth it.
About The Author
How do you put enough keywords into your copy without it sounding ridiculous? By using the 11 clever techniques in Karon’s ebook Writing With Keywords. Get the 4th edition available now at http://www.
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Exploring the Search Engine Path Less Traveled
August 14, 08 by admin.
By Trey Pennewell (c) 2008 the Phantom Writers
The vast majority of internet users will use a search engine occasionally, if not frequently. Search engines are routinely included in browsers, no matter if you use Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera, or Netscape, with the intent of saving the user time.
It may seem odd to talk about saving time on the internet. Thinking back to 15 years ago, the internet was just starting to burst into mainstream America. The speed and reach of the internet was mind-boggling at that time. Now we’ve come so far with the technology that we actually find ourselves wanting better and faster results.
As is true with nearly all technology, the internet has evolved to be something much different than it was 5, 10, and certainly 15 years ago. But have internet users evolved in the way they use the internet?
We know that humans are creatures of habit. Most of us like to do what we’re familiar with, see who we already know and get along with, and go places we already know we like. I think it’s fair to say that the same can be applied to our internet habits.
New programs, applications, and websites are constantly being created and marketed to users. The ones that get a lot of media attention have a good chance of getting users to at least test them out, even if it’s just on a trial basis.
However, there are other sites on the internet that have been around but aren’t getting the attention they deserve. Let’s go back to search engines. Most people are familiar with the “Big Three” of engines - Yahoo, MSN, and Google. If you’ve paid attention to web trends over the years, you know that each has had their heyday, with Google probably receiving the most attention in recent years.
This is a good illustration of the fact that what is popular one year on the web may be at the bottom of the líst the next year. Does anyone remember when Webcrawler.com or Excite.com were touted as the destination search engine? It’s all a part of the natural evolution and progression of search engines.
Another evolution of the search engine is the creation of the meta search engine. Meta search engines are similar, in that you type in a term or phrase to be searched. The meta search engine then gathers results from several different search engines, compiles them, and presents them in its own search results page.
The results from a meta search engine will vary, depending on which other engines the meta engine is pulling from. Dogpile.com, for instance, pulls results from Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Ask.com, About.com, MIVA.com, LookSmart.com, and others. This quickly accomplishes what would take a user much more time to open all those browser windows and type in the same search term over and over again.
However, Dogpile does receive criticism for its compiled search results page. The sponsored results are mixed in with the “real” results, which can be confusing if you’re not paying attention. It’s also hard to believe that the search results are in any particular order of relevance when broken up with those sponsored results.
Another search engine, Widow.com, uses a tried and tested algorithm to compile its results and then order them in relevance, without sponsored results. When doing a side-by-side comparison of the five top search engines (Yahoo, MSN, Google, AOL, and Fastsearch), you’ll see that Widow.com comes up with not only the most highly ranked results, but some very useful links that the other engines didn’t pull.
To illustrate my point, I looked at how the different search engines handle a specific search word. If we take a term that has been in the news a lot lately, “foreclosure”, and type that in to different search engines, we’ll see different results.
Not surprisingly, Fastsearch had no results on “foreclosure.” Though it is one of the top search engines, its focus is on business and information technology. So it’s really not going to be relevant for anything beyond those topics.
All of the other search engines (five of them!) had one or more sponsored results at the top of the page. Dogpile.com, as I previously warned you, had the most sponsored ads - an astounding 10 sponsored ads on the first results page. Plus, they’re all mixed in with the other results, with just a note at the bottom to let you know it’s an ad or otherwise paid for result.
The only search engine that returned no sponsored results or ads was Widow.com. It sorted through the results, performed its algorithm magic, and produced variety and depth in its results page. Better yet, Widow has a nifty search term bar on the left hand side that allows you to pull up search results for related terms. Talk about saving time and energy!
Of course, the main reason search engines were developed was because the internet is so expansive. No human can search the entire web on their own, hoping to stumble upon the answers and information they’re seeking. Search engines are tools to help users find pertinent information in a timely manner.
Taking a traditional approach to search engines is fine if you have the time, the motivation, and the desire. Sometimes the best drives are the ones where you only have a vague destination, right? So I suppose the same can be true of using one of the top five engines we’ve mentioned.
But sometimes, thinking outside of the box, can not only inspire new ways of thinking, but can help push you or your research in a different, better direction. The most efficient way to do that is to utilize a meta search engine. Try stepping outside of your usual search strategies and see for yourself why it “is” sometimes greener on the other side of the fence. There’s a whole wide world (web) to discover and explore!
About The Author
Trey Pennewell is a ghost writer, who regularly writes articles for clients of: thephantomwriters.com . Trey understands that the secret to successful article marketing campaigns is to write articles that publishers want to publish and readers want to read. We hope you enjoyed this article today.
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Don’t Spend a Fortune on SEO. Be Your Own SEO Guru!
August 13, 08 by admin.
By Scott Jason (c) 2008
SEO has been around for almost as long as search engines have. And for good reason. Everyone wants free advertising. But a lot has changed over the past thirteen years and with SEO gurus charging upwards of $1,000 per month, to small startups, just for maintenance you really can’t call it “free advertising” anymore. Why is SEO so expensive? Because it’s worth it. Back in the day, you could get top ranking for just about any search term you wanted just by using tricks like keyword stuffing, invisible text and cloaking. Try any of that today and Google will kick you to the curb.
Another thing that makes optimizing your site tougher than ever is competition. In 1998 when I got into SEO, there were a couple hundred million pages indexed on Google. Now there are billions upon billions! In fact, I can’t remember the last time I ran a search for anything that had less than 300,000 results found. Beating out a few thousand pages by loading your page and META tags with keywords was easy a decade ago. Today you really need to know your stuff, or at least use a tool or service that can guide you.
Even with the killer SEO software products available today, it’s still not easy. The fact that finding the right tool will make the difference between dominating Google, Yahoo and MSN and just so so results puts pressure on you early in the game. And that’s difficult because not only can using the wrong product be a waste of money and time, it can also damage your site in a way that takes years to undue.
So, no matter how you optimize your work just remember this…you are not competing against the search engines or Websites. You’re competing against the search engine ranking of individual Web pages. Too many people focus on beating search engines or whole sites, but that’s not your competition. Search engines rank pages; not sites.
Here are three ways to optimize your sites on a budget. All three are excellent methods but will vary greatly in time investment, cost and return on investment. For most entrepreneurs however, these are the best ways to put your optimization efforts on the fast track.
1.) Use an SEO How To Book (Average Cost $20 to $40)
If you have some time before you need to see results, this is a great and inexpensive way to go. Even if you use another method, I still recommend getting hold of a good SEO book for reference. Just be sure to check the copyright! I don’t buy anything that is more than a year old. Here are two of the best I’ve read in 2008 but there are many to choose from, just go to Amazon.com and search for “search engine optimization” in the Books category.
Search Engine Optimization: Your Visual Blueprint for Effective Internet Marketing (Visual Blueprint) by Kristopher B. Jones ($30 new or buy used on Amazon)
Search Engine Optimization For Dummies (For Dummies Computer/Tech)) by Peter Kent ($30 new or buy used on Amazon)
If you have a Barnes and Noble bookstore around, they typically stock both titles.
2.) Use an SEO Software Package (Average Cost $150 to $600)
If you are just starting out you might want to invest a couple hundred dollars in a good Website analysis SEO tool and if you can swing it, get a linking tool too.
A Website analysis tool will check your pages from the inside out, compare exactly what you have to your top competitors and give you detailed instructions on how to beat the competition.
In 1998 I started using WebPosition Gold. It was great at doing ranking reports but their suggestions on how to optimize my pages didn’t yield very good results. And, of course, now that Google has banned them, I avoid using it.
One tool that has worked really well for me for both Website optimization suggestions and link building can be found at iBusinessPR0M0TER.com. They’ve been around a long time and are used by the big companies like eBay who rely on top ranking for their very existence.
At about $250 it’s on the low end of the cost scale and offers a “Top 10 ranking or your monëy back” guarantëe, so they have some incentive to get you results.
3.) Attend an SEO Seminar (Average Cost $400 to $1,500)
The cost is all over the place on this one; quality too. Your best bet here is to contact SEO specialists in your area and see if they hold seminars or if you could do a training consult.
I recommend staying local because their reputation will be important to them and it’s nice to build a relationship with someone close by for when you have questions or something changes in the optimization world (which is pretty often.)
The universal search on Google.com for finding local talent in your area is to run a search on “SEO training” followed by your city name or the largest local city.
One of these three options is likely to do the trick. Most SEO experts use all three as much as possible. Best of luck!
About The Author
After 9 years in the trade Scott Jason founded BestSEOcopywriting.com in 2006. Two years later he has helped dozens of client as an SEO copywriter. His successes include top rankings on Google, Yahoo and MSN.
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Smart Search Engine Marketing - Some Guidelines
August 11, 08 by admin.
Search Engine Marketing, whether it’s paid or organic, is a science.
While it is true that you can put together an ad on Google or Yahoo!, pick a few keywords that describe your business, then bid on them and be up and running with a Pay Per Click campaign in a few minutes, the actual process requires considerably more thought. Here are a few key points to consider:
What is the goal of your ad? If you are an e-commerce merchant selling mainline products, you probably want to generate a sale. If you are operating a decorating business, your goal more likely is to generate a lead for follow-up. That goal will shape how you structure your campaign.
What kind of landing page do you want the user to click through to? Is it a specific product page with all the information necessary to complete the order or do you want your customer to land on your home page in order to get more information about your company? You may want your ad to be product specific or have a more general message.
Is there a special “deal” that you can offer in your ad? Phrases like “free shipping”, “save 10% now” or “sale ends tomorrow” create a sense of immediacy that can increase the likelihood someone will click on your ad.
You don’t have to have the top ad listing in order to be successful. While being #1 likely will bring you more clicks, you don’t want to overpay for them. Typically, as long as your ad appears in the first five positions, and has a compelling offer, you will get your share of clicks.
The keywords you select for your ad are critical. In fact, the difference between a cost-effective campaign and one that just costs you money often are the keywords you select.
Try to avoid buying general terms, unless your site has a very, very broad selection of product. The keyword “cars” might bring anyone who is looking for anything having to do with a car - that probably doesn’t do you much good if you are selling radiator hoses.
Stick to words and phrases that relate as specifically as possible to what you are selling. A good rule of thumb is that the more general a keyword is, the more expensive it is.
The page customers land on when they click on your ad should contain similar words to those used in the ad. Reinforcing the ad message is important for two reasons: first, it tells people they are “at the right place” and second it will help your Quality Score on Google and Quality Index on Yahoo!.
Google in particular attaches great importance to the relevance of your landing page and you may be able to secure a higher ad position with a lower bid than other advertisers.
Monitor your campaign regularly. This is particularly important at the outset when you are establishing what works and what doesn’t. Pay per click advertising isn’t day trading - you don’t have to be glued to the monitor but you don’t want hours to go by without seeing if your clicks are converting into your desired result of sales or leads.
A large search agency might suggest that you need 1,000 or more clicks to determine if your campaign is working. As a start-up or small business, you (or your agency) should be able to draw conclusion with far less clicks than that.
About the Author: Richard Teich is the owner of eMarketSmart.com, a Search Engine Marketing Agency based in Los Angeles, CA. He has worked with business in different e-commerce verticals, as well as in the health information and business to business sectors.
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Top Six Internal Linking Tactics To Get Top Google Rankings
August 10, 08 by admin.
By Jason O’Connor (c) 2008
If you own or run a website and are not following these six tactics for properly linking your website together then you’re losing Google traffic as you read this. First some definitions. Internal linking is the links on your website that point to other pages within your same website. External linking is when you link to another website. Tactics are specific things to do to achieve desired results, or any mode of procedure for gaining advantage or success.
There are things you can do when developing or refining your internal linking structure. If you carry out the following tactics, you’re going to achieve two things. One, you’ll make your website better from a user’s perspective. Two, you’ll rank better in Google. And it’s no coincidence that Google rewards you for doing things that make the website user’s experience easier and better. In fact, the most important thing I can recommend is that you create, design and link your website together in a way that benefits the visitor first. Your visitors are most important, not Google rankings.
One last thing before I get to the tactics. Have you heard that links from other websites that point back to your website are essential in getting top search engine rankings, especially with Google? It’s true. These links vary in their effectiveness and value depending on the website from which they’re coming. But did you also know that internal links often can have similar effectiveness and value as external links? So bear this in mind as you read on.
1) Add links in your navigation or footer as text links to all your important pages and main sections.
This is a very easy and an extremely effective tactic that not all sites do, and even fewer do for maximum results. This is the first thing I look for when reviewing a website for a client. Unfortunately, sometimes artsy Web designers add cool buttons, which are images, to all the main sections of the site, but neglect to include text links as well. Or a programmer decides to make the website’s navigation a dynamic drop down menu in DHTML or JavaScript but forgets to include text links to the same pages represented in the menus. Search engines cannot follow image links or links created in JavaScript, they can only follow simple text links, so be sure you add them to your site as well.
So if you want search engines to visit and index (or record) ALL your website’s pages, be sure there are text links pointing to all the main sections of your site and to all your important pages.
2) Make use of the rel=”nofollow” HTML tag.
This is fairly simple. Google created this tag which tells them NOT to count the link in their search engine ranking algorithm when used on a link. There’s debate that maybe Google does count them a little, or will some day in the future. But for now, this tag does greatly decrease a link’s value in Google’s eyes.
Therefore, consider using this tag on some of your links within your site. For example, let’s say you have a homepage and then create two inner pages, and that’s the extent of the site. Let’s further say that you add a link to both pages on your homepage. If your homepage has some external links pointing to it, then it has some value in regards to Google’s ranking system. When you link to each of your two new pages within your site from your homepage, each page gets only 50% of the value the homepage has. (This is all measured in Page Rank). Let’s then say that your first inner page is the one you want to rank well in Google, but you don’t care if your second inner page even gets found by Google or ranked. You could add the nofollow tag to the second link on your homepage, thereby giving the first inner page 100% of the homepage’s value.
Think of the implications. Imagine if you had a website with hundreds or thousands of pages and used the nofollow tag throughout. To understand how to implement this tag, see the two links in HTML below, one without it and one with it correctly included.
<a href=”http://www.yourwebsite.com”>Your Website</a>
<a href=”http://www.yourwebsite.com” rel=”nofollow”>Your Website</a>
Finally, if you have pages such as a privacy page, terms page, checkout pages or contact pages that you don’t care if they rank well in Google, be sure to use the nofollow tag when creating internal links to these pages.
3) Use descriptive & different phrases to point to the same inner page.
The words that are in the text of a link (also known as the anchor text) affect your search engine rankings. For example, the anchor text in the two links above is “Your Website”. If enough of these links that were on quality and valuable sites, including your website’s inner pages, pointed to the same page, it would eventually rank well in Google when someone searches for the phrase “your website”.
Therefore, be sure to make the anchor text in all your internal links the phrases you want the pages to be found for in Google. If you have a page that sells “blue widgets”, make the anchor text in links on other pages within your website that point to this page “blue widgets”. Do it like this:
<a href=”http://www.yourwebsite.com/blue-widgets.htm”>Blue Widgets</a>
Going back to the number 1 tactic above, you would be far better off making the anchor text in all your footer links as descriptive as possible. If you want to rank well in Google for “affordable blue widgets” then use this in your links that point to this page:
<a href=”http://www.yourwebsite.com/blue-widgets.htm”>Affordable Blue Widgets</a>
Finally, vary your anchor text when pointing to the same page within your website. For instance, on some of your pages you could link to your Blue Widgets page with the anchor text of “blue widgets”, then on other pages link to it using “affordable blue widgets” and then maybe use “widgets that are blue”. This allows you to get the page ranked for multiple terms and helps the user since you’re being descriptive and making your anchor text better match the content of the page it’s on.
4) Make links in your content.
If you have text on your site, make some of the words within the text, links that point to other pages within your website. For instance, if you have an article about blue widgets, or a page that describes how great your blue widgets are, make the first or second occurrence of the phrase “blue widgets” in the text a link that points to your Blue Widgets page.
5) The Home link solution.
If your website is typical, you’ll probably have a link on every page that points back to your homepage. And you should because this helps users. By doing this, you’re supplying a lot of link value to the homepage since it is getting all these internal links pointing back to it. Since in the number three tactic I recommended that you make your anchor text the same as what you want to rank for, the word “home” does you no good. I’ll assume that you’re not trying to get your homepage ranked for the word “home”, so make the anchor text what you do want it to get ranked for.
The other option is to add the nofollow tag to all your ‘Home’ links, thereby canceling out the word “home” altogether.
6) Make important pages at most 2 folders deep with your site and at most two clicks away from your homepage.
The farther away a page is, the worse it ranks. So if you put a page in a folder that is five folders deep within your website folder structure, Google will likely consider that page not as important as a page only one folder deep. Also, make the pages in your website that are most important to get ranked two or less clicks away from the homepage. This is good for users and allows Google to index these pages more quickly.
By following these top six internal linking tactics, you’ll be far ahead of the competition, you’ll rank better in Google and you’ll be making your website visitors’ lives easier.
About The Author
Jason O’Connor is the owner of Oak Web Works, LLC, an Internet strategy firm that specializes in helping businesses make monëy with their business websites. From Web design and programming to strategic Web marketing, providing free resources for Web professionals and regularly publishing The Net Gazette, Oak Web Works is a center for online strategy.
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32 Most Important SEO Tips
August 9, 08 by admin.
Following these simple tips will definitely boost your traffic and search engine rankings for free.
1. Make sure your site is not under construction, incomplete, with little or no unique content.
2. When your site is ready, submit it to Google, Yahoo, MSN and ASK.com. Consider also submitting to other search engine but most of them are powered by these four leading search engines. Submit also your site to reputable high PR web directories, open directories, yellow pages and social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us, furl, etc.
3. Submit your sitemap to Google, Yahoo, MSN and ASK.com (sitemap for search engines usually in XML format)
4. Offer sitemap to your site visitors for easy page navigation. (sitemap for visitors in HTML format)
5. Create unique and rich content sites. Avoid duplicate content. Do not create multiple pages, sub-domains, domains, mirror sites or sites with different domain names but same content.
6. Check your keywords and make sure they are relevant and actually are contained in your site. Avoid keywords stuffing.
7. Use text instead of images in your content, links and important subjects.
8. Make your TITLE and ALT tags descriptive, simple and keyword rich. Avoid irrelevant and repeated keywords.
9. Title tag should be 60-80 characters maximum length.
10. Meta tag description should be 160-180 characters including spaces. (about 25-30 words)
11. Meta Tag keywords must be 15-20 words maximum.
12. Optimize Pages with Headings (H1, H2, H3..) containing your site’s primary keywords.
13. Validate your CSS and HTML. Check for errors and broken links.
14. If your site contains dynamic pages(i.e., the URL contains a “?” character), make sure you use SEO friendly URLs. Search engines’ spiders having difficulty indexing dynamic pages.
15. Maximum links per page must be fewer than 100. Avoid the risk of being flagged as link farm by search engines.
16. Use Lynx as text browser to check your site. (http://lynx.isc.org/)
17. Allow search bots (good ones) to crawl your sites without session IDs or arguments that track their path through the site. Using these techniques may result in incomplete indexing of your site.
18. Check your web server/host if it supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. It tells search engines whether your content has changed since last crawled your site. It will save you bandwidth, resources and avoid server overload.
19. Use Robots.txt file to manage and control search engine spiders in indexing your site. You can allow and disallow spiders and choose directories you want to be crawled and indexed. But with bad bots or spam bots you need to modify your HTACCESS file to properly and effectively manage bots or spiders. Visit http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/faq.html to learn more about Robots.txt file.
20. Do not attempt to present different content to search engines than what you show to your site visitors.
21. Avoid dirty tricks and exploiting loop holes to improve search engines ranking.
22. Avoid links to bad neighborhood such as web spammers, link farms, phishing, hacker, crack, gambling, porn and scam sites. Linking to them will greatly affects your search engine rankings.
23. Do not attempt to join in link schemes, excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging and link exchange web rings.
24. Do not use unauthorized programs or online tools to submit your site, check page rankings and other automated queries. Avoid the risk of being flagged as spam.
25. Do not use hidden text and links. Show to search engines what you show to your vistors. It will greatly affect your site’s reputation.
26. Do not attempt to create pages that contains phishing, scam, viruses, trojans, backdoors, spyware, adware and other malicious programs.
27. Make your site useful and informative.
28. Improve your link building. Link to high PR websites. Quality of relevant links are far more important than quantity. Links will greatly improve your site’s visibility, popularity and rankings. Search engines consider links as votes to your site.
29. Check your page link structure. Every page should be reachable by a single static text link.
30. Be extra careful in purchasing SEO services. Some uses illegal and questionable ways to improve rankings.
31. Do not buy or sell links.
32. Do not create sites that contains purely affiliate links and no valuable content that are useful to the users.
I hope these tips will add more popularity and visibility to your site. Enjoy!
About the Author: Edwin Reyes is a Web Developer and the Webmaster of Findmesoftware.com, a Philippine based website that provides free software downloads, tools, reviews, online tips, blogging resources, tutorials and Free SEO Tools and Software Download.
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Three SEO Magic Bullets and How to Use Them
August 7, 08 by admin.
By Scott Jason (c) 2008
There are the three things the top experts rely on to snag the top spots on Google, Yahoo and MSN; Stats, Spying and Shortcuts. Simply put, stats show you where to spend more time than money, spying shows you how to beat your competition and shortcuts show you how to do it as quickly as possible. Search Engine Stats: Up to date Statistics show you who is searching where and what they are clicking on. This will help you make the best possible decisions on how to spend your SEO time and where to spend your SEM money (search engine marketing, including pay per clíck advertising.)
A.) The following search usage information is based on the Nielson/Net Ratings of May 2008.:
59.3% - Google | 16.9% - Yahoo | 13.3% - MSN | 4.1% - AOL
That’s almost 94% of all searches going through just four search engines and well over half going through Google alone!
B.) Knowing exactly how much each search engine is used is the first big step. Now we know where to focus our time and effort. But that’s only half the story. We need some reliable inside information to help us plan for search engine optimization and search engine marketing strategies. So we turn to a leader - the UK based company Neutralize.com. They confirm that users of Google versus those of MSN are almost exact opposites when it comes to clicking on natural versus pay per clíck search listings. Here’s what their extensive research has revealed:
On Google, 72.3% of visitors rely on the natural listings that SEO helps you get.
Only 27.7% use the paid links you purchase as part of your SEM plan.
On MSN, the opposite is true. Only 28.8% of their visitors go for the organic listings you get from SEO.
But a whopping 71.2% can’t wait to clíck on those paid links.
This information alone can be worth its weight in gold! I cite these numbers when I tell my clients paying me to optimize for MSN is almost a waste of money, since they would spend about the same on PPC and get instant results. But by the same token it helps them understand why they get so few clicks for paid listings on Google and it’s more evident that SEO efforts are well spent here.
The Art of SEO Spying: If you want to beat your competition you really need to know what they are up to. Otherwise you’re just guessing and that gets expensive.
So forget about guessing your way through or spending tons of time and money on research. You can get most for free and the rest for just a few well placed dollars. Just head on over to SpyFu.com and check out the free information they provide. Or, if you want the bigger picture go to https://www.spyfu.com/WhyBuySpyfu.aspx to see everything they provide, free and paid. If you decide the free stuff is not enough, I suggest spending $6 for a 3 day full access package and test drive it.
Here’s a blurb from SpyFu.com…”Want to know which of your competitors has the largest ad budget, or which term gets the most clicks per day? Use SpyFu’s Advanced Search to find out. Advanced Search allows one to search by all the metrics provided on the site and allows you to focus on the data that’s most important to you. What’s more, you can save your Advanced Search results to Excel with the clíck of a button.”
SEO Shortcuts; Top Industry Tools: Before we get into the details I want to stress that shortcuts should NEVER involve cutting corners. The shortcuts we will explore are based on discovering how the experts get their top results so quickly and then following in their footsteps. When it comes to SEO, the best shortcut to success is through the use of SEO software tools.
There are plenty out there so I’ll just focus on two of the most widely used.
Both of these tools are fantastic but designed to accomplish very different things. One of the first SEO tools I used can be found at webposition.com. They have a professional version for $389 (plus $99 per year) or a standard version for $149 (plus $99 per year.) I only used the professional version because it had more than the standard. The reporting was great but I found it to be a better tool for working with pay per clíck than doing actual SEO.
I switched over to the little beauty available at SEOeliteWeb.com and have had no reason to look for another. For $167 with free lifetime upgrades and no annual fees it’s the best money I’ve spent so far. I like it because it’s a real down in the trenches SEO tool that even handles linking and I can show my seminar attendees how to use it in a matter of minutes. And to be honest, even my least knowledgeable students get some top spots after a month or two with it, so I tend to recommend it heartily.
About The Author
Scott Jason is the owner and president of BestSEOcopywriting.com . An accomplished SEO consultant and SEO copywriter he has been getting top ranking results from Google, Yahoo and MSM for more than nine years.
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Search Engine Ranking: How to Improve your Search Engine Position
August 7, 08 by admin.
Your search engine ranking depends on a number of factors: assuming you get listed in the first place. If you have managed to get that listing then you can improve your search engine position by means of links back to your website and also by improving your content.
Significant improvements, however, will likely involve radical restructuring of your website, and would have been better thought out before building your site.
Many so-called SEO experts will attempt to make sure that all your meta tags are in place, even though they have little bearing any more on your search engine rank, be that on Google, Yahoo, MSN or Ask.
They might even have a look at your internal linking, but once you have built your website it is too late for that. Your internal linking strategy should have been formulated prior to constructing your website. There are ways to design a site to be search engine friendly, and I use them all the time.
The very first two websites I tried these techniques on each reached page #1 on Google for their main keyword within less than a month. They were listed within two days due to other techniques I use, but their high listings were due to the site design. I then designed a third, and true to form, it reached page #1.
You want that success as well, and it is not difficult to achieve. However, it involves starting from the bottom up, although there is a lot that you can do with your existing website apart from just playing around with meta tags. I am not suggesting that you shouldn’t make sure that you have meta descriptions and a title tag in your html, but they are nothing like as significant as the changes I make to my websites to improve their search engine ranking. Not even close!
There are a number of changes you can make to improve your search engine position, ranging from your internal linking to the way you lead the spiders around your site.
Just ask yourself one simple question: what determines your search engine rank on Google? How does Google calculate your search engine position? That’s the first thing you have to learn if you want to improve yours. You have to know your enemy to beat him.
They might even have a look at your internal linking, but once you have built your website it is too late for that. Your internal linking strategy should have been formulated prior to constructing your website. There are ways to design a site to be search engine friendly, and I use them all the time.
The very first two websites I tried these techniques on each reached page #1 on Google for their main keyword within less than a month. They were listed within two days due to other techniques I use, but their high listings were due to the site design. I then designed a third, and true to form, it reached page #1.
You want that success as well, and it is not difficult to achieve. However, it involves starting from the bottom up, although there is a lot that you can do with your existing website apart from just playing around with meta tags. I am not suggesting that you shouldn’t make sure that you have meta descriptions and a title tag in your html, but they are nothing like as significant as the changes I make to my websites to improve their search engine ranking. Not even close!
There are a number of changes you can make to improve your search engine position, ranging from your internal linking to the way you lead the spiders around your site.
Just ask yourself one simple question: what determines your search engine rank on Google? How does Google calculate your search engine position? That’s the first thing you have to learn if you want to improve yours. You have to know your enemy to beat him.
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Ten SEO Mistakes Made on Database Driven Websites
July 31, 08 by admin.
Search engine friendly websites is one of those often heard phrases, both from web site development companies and from their clients. Everyone knows that this is important to have, and yet it is one of the things that is actually often overlooked.
Search engine optimisation companies actually spend a lot of their time analysing a website and removing barriers to the search engines ranking a site highly. At the web development level, it is possible to build a site that is perfectly search engine friendly. One of the hardest types of sites to get right though are database driven websites. Listed below are ten of the most common issues that are created, often unknowingly, in the development process of a dynamically generated web site.
1. Pages with duplicate content - not enough differential areas within the pages, so that only small areas of the page change from page to page. It is essential that enough of the page text changes for the search engines to see an appreciable difference between one page and the next.
2. Pages with duplicate page titles - the page title is a great indicator to the search engines of the primary content of the page. Whilst this is often unique on sites such as e-commerce websites, it is often overlooked in other sites, particularly where small areas of the site are generated from a database, such as news pages.
3. Pages with duplicate meta descriptions - again, this is easy to overlook and set a global or category level meta description. These give the search engines a reason to penalise your site for not giving them enough information, and again, creating a unique meta description for every page is an essential SEO task.
4. Using auto-generation of pages as a shortcut instead of creating good content. This is linked quite closely to point 1, where it is possible to create pages that have only a tiny percentage difference between them. Databases are fantastic ways of storing information, but you still need to put the work in to fill them with content. Unique information about the subject of the page will immensely help both the long tail and the ability of the search engines to determine that a page is valuable.
5. Creating pages that are hidden behind form submissions or javascript postbacks that cannot be accessed by a search engine crawler. This is far more common that is generally realised. For instance .NET creates postback links by default instead of proper links - potentially making huge sections of a site unreachable. Likewise, it is easy to hide lovely content rich areas of your site behind a drop down selector in a form that means certain areas of the site are not visible.
6. Too many query strings - this is a common bugbear of the professional SEO, where complicated database selections create deep levels of pages, but with seven or eight &id= type strings. Additionally, some bad development methodology can leave pages with null query strings that appear in every URL but don’t do anything. The answer to this is generally URL rewrites, creating much more search engine friendly and user-friendly URLs!
7. Putting query strings in different orders when accessed through different places - this can create duplicate content issues, which can cause major penalties.
8. Not using user language to generate automated pages - if you are going to create a database driven website that uses words in the query strings (or better in rewritten URLs) make sure that you use words that will help you with SEO - if you sell widgets, make sure you are using the word widgets somewhere in the URL instead of just product= or id= - keyword research can assist with this.
9. Not allowing the meta data and title to be edited easily after the site build. It is possible to hardcode the generation of meta information into a database that doesn’t allow it to be edited later. Creating a mechanism for modifying this information initially helps everyone at a later stage when the information needs changing without shoehorning it into an already developed structure.
10. Creating keyword stuffed pages by using auto-generation. Once upon a time, search engines quite liked pages with high densities of your keywords, but now these are likely to get you marked down rather than up. So be aware when creating pages that long pages with lots of your products on can create too high a density. For instance listing blue widgets, light blue widgets, navy blue widgets, sky blue widgets is going to create a page with a very dense page for the phrase “blue widgets”.
These are just 10 of the most common potential optimisation pitfalls when creating dynamic websites. There are many more facets to producing a great database driven site, including user friendliness, speed, performance and security, but they all add together to make the best solution to your needs.
About the Author: Mark Stubbs is a freelance writer who specialises in internet marketing and web site development. For more information on database driven websites he suggests that you visit www.obs-group.co.uk.
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