Which part of search engine optimization (SEO) is most important? Well, it likely depends on who you ask, but just to be clear, all aspects are important. But which aspect of SEO you emphasize at any given time might be different based on what your website needs to succeed.
Before I go on, let me identify the different aspects of optimization that you should keep in mind:
On-site keyword management
Internal link structure
Website template and design
Inbound link building
Miscellanous issues
This is a little bit different kind of list than what you are typically used to seeing when this topic is discussed among industry professionals, but the fundamentals are there. On-site keyword management is necessary for high rankings. That doesn’t mean spamming the search engines by repeating your keywords over and over again. It does mean optimizing your web pages for keywords using density, tags, and other elements that assist web pages with ranking based on keyword usage (alt tags, page titles, heads and subheads, etc.).
Internal link structure refers to site navigation, but it also includes in-text links that may not be included in your navigation menu.
Design concerns are also important. Which codes do you use? How much of the code is on your page versus in a separate folder on the server? These are very important concerns to look at from a design and optimization perspective.
And link building. Much is said of link building. Often too much. But it is necessary for helping you get your pages ranked and moving up in the search rankings.
Read More...
Showing posts with label seo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label seo. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Why SEO Is the Key to Internet Marketing
SEO is the key to an internet companies business, paying for this service can be beneficial. They specialize in knowing how to raise your search engine positions, monitoring those positions on the regular basis, and adjusting their strategies to account for undesirable results in any given month. It can take a long time to do Seo on your own site, paying some one to do it could save time rather than try to maintain high search engine positions on your own.
Your website’s ranking on search engines is a vital element of your overall marketing campaign, and there are ways to improve your link popularity through legitimate methods. There are a lot of webmasters that are trying to use different scams to gain link popularity.
Thankfully search engines are up to date, and are now on guard for “spam” pages and won’t allow those websites that are using spam methods. When a search engines tracks down such a site, that site is demoted in ranking or sometimes that website is disregarded from the search engine. Out of the many search engines some have paid inclusion This means that you pay the specific search engine an annual fee for your web page to be included in their index.
Even so every search engine has a method of finding you website online, and it does this for free. So whether you pay or not, your web page will eventually be indexed by all Internet search engines, as long as the spider can follow a link to your page. The issue for majority people is how fast their site can be indexed.
Setting up a webpage is the beginning part of marketing online, and the success or failure of your site depends greatly on how specifically you have defined your website goals. With out an established reason for you webpage it could mean, it will most likely fail to accomplish anything. Without goals to guide you in developing and monitoring your website, its only benefit would be for looking at.
Read More...
Your website’s ranking on search engines is a vital element of your overall marketing campaign, and there are ways to improve your link popularity through legitimate methods. There are a lot of webmasters that are trying to use different scams to gain link popularity.
Thankfully search engines are up to date, and are now on guard for “spam” pages and won’t allow those websites that are using spam methods. When a search engines tracks down such a site, that site is demoted in ranking or sometimes that website is disregarded from the search engine. Out of the many search engines some have paid inclusion This means that you pay the specific search engine an annual fee for your web page to be included in their index.
Even so every search engine has a method of finding you website online, and it does this for free. So whether you pay or not, your web page will eventually be indexed by all Internet search engines, as long as the spider can follow a link to your page. The issue for majority people is how fast their site can be indexed.
Setting up a webpage is the beginning part of marketing online, and the success or failure of your site depends greatly on how specifically you have defined your website goals. With out an established reason for you webpage it could mean, it will most likely fail to accomplish anything. Without goals to guide you in developing and monitoring your website, its only benefit would be for looking at.
Read More...
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Why Different Types of Search Engine Optimization Do Not Work
There are many effective search engine marketing agencies you can use who will establish search visibility and search referral traffic to your site, so why waste your time with these?
Submit to Search Engines
There is no point in submitting your Web site's URLs to search engines. Search engines will crawl your Web site if there are links pointing to it. If you have no links pointing to your site, then you will have no search visibility no matter how often you submit to search engines.
Rely on Meta-Keywords
For many years now, search engines have ignored meta-keywords. Long ago, a key SEO technique was to stuff keywords into meta-keywords. This worked when Bill Clinton was President. Not today.
Free or Cheap Means No Results
It is true you get what you pay for. Free or cheap submissions to search engines have no impact. Cheap link building will not establish long-term search visibility. Effective search engine marketing is highly valuable to business. It is brutally competitive because many know how to do it well. Someone who understands the complex art and science of Search Engine Optimization usually has a good idea how to price services. Yes, there can be a huge difference between the fees of qualified search engine marketers. Nonetheless, a competent search optimizer will charge more than $500 a year. If that is your budget, don't expect miracles.
Read More..
Submit to Search Engines
There is no point in submitting your Web site's URLs to search engines. Search engines will crawl your Web site if there are links pointing to it. If you have no links pointing to your site, then you will have no search visibility no matter how often you submit to search engines.
Rely on Meta-Keywords
For many years now, search engines have ignored meta-keywords. Long ago, a key SEO technique was to stuff keywords into meta-keywords. This worked when Bill Clinton was President. Not today.
Free or Cheap Means No Results
It is true you get what you pay for. Free or cheap submissions to search engines have no impact. Cheap link building will not establish long-term search visibility. Effective search engine marketing is highly valuable to business. It is brutally competitive because many know how to do it well. Someone who understands the complex art and science of Search Engine Optimization usually has a good idea how to price services. Yes, there can be a huge difference between the fees of qualified search engine marketers. Nonetheless, a competent search optimizer will charge more than $500 a year. If that is your budget, don't expect miracles.
Read More..
Monday, November 17, 2008
Why Google Must Die
It's called SEO—search engine optimization—and it's pretty much all anyone working with Web sites ever talks about nowadays. You may think it consists of ways to trick the search engines, Google in particular, into giving you higher than usual page rankings. But in fact, it centers around the idea that Google sucks so much that companies think they need to use SEO to get the results they deserve.
By reverse-engineering the way Google operates, SEO experts can see how the process works. From a user's perspective, once you learn how Google does what it does, it's a miracle that you ever get the right results. And from my experience, the right results in many circumstances are nearly impossible to obtain—and may never be obtainable in the future.
Let's look at some of the problems that have developed over the years.
Inability to identify a home site. All the search engines have this habit, but often it is laughable. You'd think that if I were looking for Art Jenkins, and Art Jenkins had a Web site named Artjenkins.com, search engines would list that first, right? Most often this page is never listed anywhere.
Read More..
By reverse-engineering the way Google operates, SEO experts can see how the process works. From a user's perspective, once you learn how Google does what it does, it's a miracle that you ever get the right results. And from my experience, the right results in many circumstances are nearly impossible to obtain—and may never be obtainable in the future.
Let's look at some of the problems that have developed over the years.
Inability to identify a home site. All the search engines have this habit, but often it is laughable. You'd think that if I were looking for Art Jenkins, and Art Jenkins had a Web site named Artjenkins.com, search engines would list that first, right? Most often this page is never listed anywhere.
Read More..
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Mobile websites 'need adequate SEO'
Businesses must do more to ensure their mobile websites have a presence in search engine listings, an expert has asserted.
According to Mobile Commerce chief executive Steve Page, not enough mobile sites in the travel sector in particular make adequate use of search engine optimisation (SEO) to stay high in search rankings, TravelMole reports.
He told the EyeforTravel Mobile Technology in Travel seminar: "We know that web users on mobiles tend to use a search tool like Google or Yahoo! to find what they want rather than going direct to the website they need, so it's incredibly important that people are properly directed to your site once they have searched."
Mr Page went on to demonstrate the need for mobile SEO by conducting a search for British Airways (BA) on his own handset. Both the normal BA site and bmi's website ranked higher than the airline's mobile site.
According to Nielsen Mobile, online search is the second most popular mobile web activity among European handset owners.
Read More..
According to Mobile Commerce chief executive Steve Page, not enough mobile sites in the travel sector in particular make adequate use of search engine optimisation (SEO) to stay high in search rankings, TravelMole reports.
He told the EyeforTravel Mobile Technology in Travel seminar: "We know that web users on mobiles tend to use a search tool like Google or Yahoo! to find what they want rather than going direct to the website they need, so it's incredibly important that people are properly directed to your site once they have searched."
Mr Page went on to demonstrate the need for mobile SEO by conducting a search for British Airways (BA) on his own handset. Both the normal BA site and bmi's website ranked higher than the airline's mobile site.
According to Nielsen Mobile, online search is the second most popular mobile web activity among European handset owners.
Read More..
Monday, November 10, 2008
Google updates its Toolbar PageRank
What is Toolbar PR, how can you see it and what does it represent?
You can get access to the PageRank values by installing the Google toolbar. Once you’ve installed it you’ll see that for each website you visit, the green bar will get longer or shorter (actually it’s a number from 1 to 10 - for those real geeks amongst you, you may be interested to know that Google actually stores it as a floating point number and that there are n numbers after the decimal point. But that’s not important and maybe even just a little bit dull…) .
If you visit Google then they get a nice fat 10 and if you visit other pages then they get a big fat zero (including this blog!).
So, most sensible people would assume that pages with a high PR are more popular than those with a lower PR. If that was the end of the story then it’d be great, but it’s not.
Relying on Toolbar PR has the following drawbacks:
1. The value that is displayed is the PR of a website at a fixed point in time, so when an update is published it is already out of date.
2. Toolbar PR is also rather unreliable in that sometimes it’ll give you a different number depending on what Google datacentre you’re looking at (short lesson: When you go to google.com you’re directed to one of many servers, each of which can have slightly different results to the other - the same goes for PR) and sometimes it’s been reported to just show weird numbers.
3. This is the most important part - the value in the toolbar PR has no relevance whatsoever to the keywords you’re targeting. A site with 0 PR can rank above a site with a PR of 8 for a search if the 0 PR site is deemed to be more relevant to the search topic.
Toolbar PR has its uses, but if you’re evaluating the worth of a website, don’t base it purely on Toolbar PR. You should be investigating a stack of factors and coming to a conclusion based on the sum total of those factors, not a flaky green bar in your web browser.
When the updates are finally visible in the next day or two, don’t go nuts if your PR goes up or down. Note it and see how it relates to the other factors you measure - only then can you make a comment on the current SEO-worthiness of your site.
Read More..
You can get access to the PageRank values by installing the Google toolbar. Once you’ve installed it you’ll see that for each website you visit, the green bar will get longer or shorter (actually it’s a number from 1 to 10 - for those real geeks amongst you, you may be interested to know that Google actually stores it as a floating point number and that there are n numbers after the decimal point. But that’s not important and maybe even just a little bit dull…) .
If you visit Google then they get a nice fat 10 and if you visit other pages then they get a big fat zero (including this blog!).
So, most sensible people would assume that pages with a high PR are more popular than those with a lower PR. If that was the end of the story then it’d be great, but it’s not.
Relying on Toolbar PR has the following drawbacks:
1. The value that is displayed is the PR of a website at a fixed point in time, so when an update is published it is already out of date.
2. Toolbar PR is also rather unreliable in that sometimes it’ll give you a different number depending on what Google datacentre you’re looking at (short lesson: When you go to google.com you’re directed to one of many servers, each of which can have slightly different results to the other - the same goes for PR) and sometimes it’s been reported to just show weird numbers.
3. This is the most important part - the value in the toolbar PR has no relevance whatsoever to the keywords you’re targeting. A site with 0 PR can rank above a site with a PR of 8 for a search if the 0 PR site is deemed to be more relevant to the search topic.
Toolbar PR has its uses, but if you’re evaluating the worth of a website, don’t base it purely on Toolbar PR. You should be investigating a stack of factors and coming to a conclusion based on the sum total of those factors, not a flaky green bar in your web browser.
When the updates are finally visible in the next day or two, don’t go nuts if your PR goes up or down. Note it and see how it relates to the other factors you measure - only then can you make a comment on the current SEO-worthiness of your site.
Read More..
Friday, November 7, 2008
Important OF Content For SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via natural result. To reach Top in any search engine the content plays very vital role you can say that content is a king of the website. content and information architecture components will always be important to web design.The belief that a website needs to submit every page to the search engines. One of the most important parts of SEO is finding a reliable source of information. One of the most important parts of SEO is finding a reliable source of information.
The content of you website will explain about you and your product the more explaine about it will give you more and more visitor who are interested to your product and service. we can say content is a king in seo with healthy content the site will go fast in search engine. With the help of seo our site can get top in google or yahoo or msn but with the help of proper content our customer can understand what we are providing what is our searvice. with the proper content one can interested to hire our service or purchase our product or it will of no use to get in top of the google as no one understand and will not purchase our product.
Read More..
The content of you website will explain about you and your product the more explaine about it will give you more and more visitor who are interested to your product and service. we can say content is a king in seo with healthy content the site will go fast in search engine. With the help of seo our site can get top in google or yahoo or msn but with the help of proper content our customer can understand what we are providing what is our searvice. with the proper content one can interested to hire our service or purchase our product or it will of no use to get in top of the google as no one understand and will not purchase our product.
Read More..
Use Proper Heading Tags To Improve Your Site SEO
Heading tags are a very important element in creating and maintaining a search engine friendly web site or blog. In this some what short but descriptive article, I am going to explain to you what heading tags are and how they can be used on your website for improving your site SEO.
A heading tag defines headers. A header is used to mark sections on your blog or web site. There are six header levels. These levels are as follows: H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6. The H1 header tag is the largest font size and H6 is the smallest.
Search engines look for header tags because they are beacons for finding content as well as pathways on your blog or web site. The three most commonly used header tags are: H1, H2, and H3. Sometimes, H4 is used, but not too often. H5 and H6 are rarely used.
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A heading tag defines headers. A header is used to mark sections on your blog or web site. There are six header levels. These levels are as follows: H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6. The H1 header tag is the largest font size and H6 is the smallest.
Search engines look for header tags because they are beacons for finding content as well as pathways on your blog or web site. The three most commonly used header tags are: H1, H2, and H3. Sometimes, H4 is used, but not too often. H5 and H6 are rarely used.
Read More..
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Why Video SEO is hard for political campaigns
Eric elaborated on what have been some of the major obstacles for candidates to heavily engage in an organic video strategy:
Small online marketing teams. Eric’s own company found that even on the Presidential scale, both candidates have very small teams that are dedicated to digital media. “Each team only has a few people that are dedicated to all of online. Really devoting the time and resources have been a manpower issue.” Despite this limited manpower, each candidate’s YouTube channels have actually been performing very good.
Traditional conversion goals. Most online marketing for candidates have been about ROI and direct-response, i.e., fundraising. “Even though both candidates did a really good job in the social search space, their unique online ads were confined to display and search, rather than video content.” says Eric.
Advertising venue limitations. Most of the online advertising by the candidates were done in the search space, and in the portals and ad networks, the latter of “which really don’t allow for a lot of out-of-the-box online tactics when it comes to online video. Portals and ad networks need to be very standard to have a scalable offering sometimes.” says Eric.
Read More..
Small online marketing teams. Eric’s own company found that even on the Presidential scale, both candidates have very small teams that are dedicated to digital media. “Each team only has a few people that are dedicated to all of online. Really devoting the time and resources have been a manpower issue.” Despite this limited manpower, each candidate’s YouTube channels have actually been performing very good.
Traditional conversion goals. Most online marketing for candidates have been about ROI and direct-response, i.e., fundraising. “Even though both candidates did a really good job in the social search space, their unique online ads were confined to display and search, rather than video content.” says Eric.
Advertising venue limitations. Most of the online advertising by the candidates were done in the search space, and in the portals and ad networks, the latter of “which really don’t allow for a lot of out-of-the-box online tactics when it comes to online video. Portals and ad networks need to be very standard to have a scalable offering sometimes.” says Eric.
Read More..
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Ten Tips to the Top of the Search Engines
1. Do not purchase a new domain unless you have to.
The search engines put a lot of stock in how long your website and domain have been around. While you can purchase a new domain and redirect your old one to the new one, your best bet is to use your existing domain/website if at all possible. If you're redesigning or starting from scratch and you have to use a brand-new domain for some reason, you can expect at least somewhat of a loss in search engine traffic. It could be anywhere from a few weeks to a few months or more.
2. Optimize your site for your target audience, not for the search engines.
This may sound counter intuitive, but hear me out. The search engines are looking for pages that best fit the keyword phrase someone types into their little search box. If those "someones" are typing in search words that relate to what your site offers, then they are most likely members of your target audience. You need to optimize your site to meet *their* needs. If you don't know who your target audience is, then you need to find out one way or another. Look for studies online that might provide demographic information, and visit other sites, communities, or forums where your target audience might hang out and listen to what they discuss. This information will be crucial to your resulting website design, keyword research, and copy writing.
3. Research your keyword phrases extensively.
The phrases you think your target market might be searching for may very well be incorrect. To find the optimal phrases to optimize for, use research tools such as Keyword Discovery, Wordtracker or Google's Keyword Tool. Compile lists of the most relevant phrases for your site, and choose a few different ones for every page. Never shoot for general keywords such as "travel" or "vacation," as they are rarely (if ever) indicative of what your site is really about.
4. Design and categorize your site architecture and navigation based on your keyword research.
Your research may uncover undiscovered areas of interest or ways of categorizing your products/services that you may wish to add to your site. For instance, let's say your site sells toys. There are numerous ways you could categorize and lay out your site so that people will find the toys they're looking for. Are people looking for toys to fit their child's stage of development? (Look for keyword phrases such as "preschool toys.") Or are they more likely to be seeking specific brands of toys? Most likely, your keyword research will show you that people are looking for toys in many different ways. Your job is to make sure that your site's navigation showcases the various ways of searching. Make sure you have links to specific-brand pages as well as specific age ranges, specific types of toys, etc.
5. Program your site to be "crawler-friendly."
The search engines can't fill out forms, can't search your site, can't read JavaScript links and menus, and can't interpret graphics and Flash. This doesn't mean that you can't use these things on your site; you most certainly can! However, you do need to provide alternate means of navigating your site as necessary. If you have only a drop-down sequence of menus to choose a category or a brand of something, the search engine crawlers will never find those resulting pages. You'll need to make sure that you always have some form of HTML links in the main navigation on every page which link to the top-level pages of your site. From those pages, you'll need to have further HTML links to the individual product/service pages. (Please note that HTML links do NOT have to be text-only links. There's nothing wrong with graphical image navigation that is wrapped in standard tags, as the search engines can follow image links just fine.)
Read More..
The search engines put a lot of stock in how long your website and domain have been around. While you can purchase a new domain and redirect your old one to the new one, your best bet is to use your existing domain/website if at all possible. If you're redesigning or starting from scratch and you have to use a brand-new domain for some reason, you can expect at least somewhat of a loss in search engine traffic. It could be anywhere from a few weeks to a few months or more.
2. Optimize your site for your target audience, not for the search engines.
This may sound counter intuitive, but hear me out. The search engines are looking for pages that best fit the keyword phrase someone types into their little search box. If those "someones" are typing in search words that relate to what your site offers, then they are most likely members of your target audience. You need to optimize your site to meet *their* needs. If you don't know who your target audience is, then you need to find out one way or another. Look for studies online that might provide demographic information, and visit other sites, communities, or forums where your target audience might hang out and listen to what they discuss. This information will be crucial to your resulting website design, keyword research, and copy writing.
3. Research your keyword phrases extensively.
The phrases you think your target market might be searching for may very well be incorrect. To find the optimal phrases to optimize for, use research tools such as Keyword Discovery, Wordtracker or Google's Keyword Tool. Compile lists of the most relevant phrases for your site, and choose a few different ones for every page. Never shoot for general keywords such as "travel" or "vacation," as they are rarely (if ever) indicative of what your site is really about.
4. Design and categorize your site architecture and navigation based on your keyword research.
Your research may uncover undiscovered areas of interest or ways of categorizing your products/services that you may wish to add to your site. For instance, let's say your site sells toys. There are numerous ways you could categorize and lay out your site so that people will find the toys they're looking for. Are people looking for toys to fit their child's stage of development? (Look for keyword phrases such as "preschool toys.") Or are they more likely to be seeking specific brands of toys? Most likely, your keyword research will show you that people are looking for toys in many different ways. Your job is to make sure that your site's navigation showcases the various ways of searching. Make sure you have links to specific-brand pages as well as specific age ranges, specific types of toys, etc.
5. Program your site to be "crawler-friendly."
The search engines can't fill out forms, can't search your site, can't read JavaScript links and menus, and can't interpret graphics and Flash. This doesn't mean that you can't use these things on your site; you most certainly can! However, you do need to provide alternate means of navigating your site as necessary. If you have only a drop-down sequence of menus to choose a category or a brand of something, the search engine crawlers will never find those resulting pages. You'll need to make sure that you always have some form of HTML links in the main navigation on every page which link to the top-level pages of your site. From those pages, you'll need to have further HTML links to the individual product/service pages. (Please note that HTML links do NOT have to be text-only links. There's nothing wrong with graphical image navigation that is wrapped in standard tags, as the search engines can follow image links just fine.)
Read More..
Impact of Web Design in Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization is more than just a trend nowadays. It is used and applied by almost all sites on the internet that aim to make money and reach online popularity. Among the many strategies of optimizing a web site, s engine friendly web design is one of the topmost priorities.
The impact of the design of the site on search engine robotic crawlers or spiders can help raise the ranking of the site. This is where search engine friendly web design comes in. There are many ways to make the web site more attractive to robotic visitors and human visitors alike. Actually, spiders and crawlers from search engines do not mind the overall aesthetic value of the site. All these robotic crawlers need is the information it can get from the site. The tricky part is how to put relevant information in the site in order for the crawlers to properly index the site due to its relevance.
There has to be consideration for ease of getting around the website, being appealing to a wide range of visitors and finding the right place for the website. Making a basic, visually appealing site is easy with the many technology advances available today, the problem with these advances are that they are sometimes quite tricky to use thus making your website difficult to navigate in. Search engine friendly web design should be easy to use and friendly to both human and robotic browsers.
Easy navigational access can be done by making the pages of the site easy to navigate to and having easy to understand and use button or labels to click on. The pictures and images on your search engine friendly web design should be just the right size and scale to enable users to see them promptly after clicking instead of taking a very long time to download . Waiting for images and other graphics to load can be off putting for most visitors and will eventually lead them to another site which is more optimized and easy to view. Even spiders and crawlers will give up on a site which is not easy to navigate and get into.
Read More..
The impact of the design of the site on search engine robotic crawlers or spiders can help raise the ranking of the site. This is where search engine friendly web design comes in. There are many ways to make the web site more attractive to robotic visitors and human visitors alike. Actually, spiders and crawlers from search engines do not mind the overall aesthetic value of the site. All these robotic crawlers need is the information it can get from the site. The tricky part is how to put relevant information in the site in order for the crawlers to properly index the site due to its relevance.
There has to be consideration for ease of getting around the website, being appealing to a wide range of visitors and finding the right place for the website. Making a basic, visually appealing site is easy with the many technology advances available today, the problem with these advances are that they are sometimes quite tricky to use thus making your website difficult to navigate in. Search engine friendly web design should be easy to use and friendly to both human and robotic browsers.
Easy navigational access can be done by making the pages of the site easy to navigate to and having easy to understand and use button or labels to click on. The pictures and images on your search engine friendly web design should be just the right size and scale to enable users to see them promptly after clicking instead of taking a very long time to download . Waiting for images and other graphics to load can be off putting for most visitors and will eventually lead them to another site which is more optimized and easy to view. Even spiders and crawlers will give up on a site which is not easy to navigate and get into.
Read More..
Friday, October 31, 2008
More SEO Tips for Bloggers
Meta tags won’t help your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) because they don’t have an impact on your SEO ranking. However, meta descriptions can help because people may want to search/link/read more if the description is interesting.
The “title” portion of the img src tag is only useful to you. It allows you to give your images more description so you know what you’ve shown in your image. It is not at all used in SEO. On the other hand, the “alt” portion of the img src tag offers some help with SEO, but only in Google Images.
It is possible to over-optimize your blog or web site for SEO. If, for instance, you’re writing a post about cell phones, you may choose to use several variations of cell phone: cell phone, cellphone, mobile phone, Verizon, iPhone, etc. This can overwhelm your post because you’re using too many keywords in the hopes of stronger SEO. Your readers are turned off and not reading. Instead, focus on what is irresistable. What is the most interesting part of your post? What will make the readers more interested?
What not to do for SEO: Don’t micro-focus your posts. You’ll most likely end up with short, limited posts that read more like an advertisement. In turn, these types of posts rarely offer value.
Read More..
The “title” portion of the img src tag is only useful to you. It allows you to give your images more description so you know what you’ve shown in your image. It is not at all used in SEO. On the other hand, the “alt” portion of the img src tag offers some help with SEO, but only in Google Images.
It is possible to over-optimize your blog or web site for SEO. If, for instance, you’re writing a post about cell phones, you may choose to use several variations of cell phone: cell phone, cellphone, mobile phone, Verizon, iPhone, etc. This can overwhelm your post because you’re using too many keywords in the hopes of stronger SEO. Your readers are turned off and not reading. Instead, focus on what is irresistable. What is the most interesting part of your post? What will make the readers more interested?
What not to do for SEO: Don’t micro-focus your posts. You’ll most likely end up with short, limited posts that read more like an advertisement. In turn, these types of posts rarely offer value.
Read More..
Performance Related SEO In An Economic Downturn
Like a number of SEO companies we have occasionally offered performance related services in the past. These normally work by us taking a percentage of the increase in revenue we drive via organic search.
The problem with these agreements is when it comes to setting benchmark figures to measure our performance against. When the economy is in freefall and retailers in most industries are issuing profit warnings even the best SEO companies might struggle to achieve positive growth over the next 24 months.
Some industries such as insurance and payday loans are recession proof but in retail it wouldn’t be a surprise to see online revenues falling by 20-40%. Any SEO company on a performance related contract benchmarked against last years turnover is going to really struggle!
Of course SEO is a fantastic way to increase profitability during these uncertain times. If you can maintain turnover while your competitors are losing then you gain valuable market share. Once the economy recovers you have a huge advantage by being at the top of Google for all your keywords.
Read More...
The problem with these agreements is when it comes to setting benchmark figures to measure our performance against. When the economy is in freefall and retailers in most industries are issuing profit warnings even the best SEO companies might struggle to achieve positive growth over the next 24 months.
Some industries such as insurance and payday loans are recession proof but in retail it wouldn’t be a surprise to see online revenues falling by 20-40%. Any SEO company on a performance related contract benchmarked against last years turnover is going to really struggle!
Of course SEO is a fantastic way to increase profitability during these uncertain times. If you can maintain turnover while your competitors are losing then you gain valuable market share. Once the economy recovers you have a huge advantage by being at the top of Google for all your keywords.
Read More...
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Your Website from the Ground Up in 10 Steps
Step 1 - Keyword Research
Even before you choose your domain name, you should put a little time into some keyword research. Research all the possible keywords that will fit your industry and the website you plan on building. Having a clear idea of what your end targets are will make the rest of your job much easier and help things to just fall into place. Take a look at Keyword Research for SEO , written earlier this summer, for more help on this.
Step 2 - Domain Selection
If you already have an established brick and mortar business and the website will be an extension of that business, using your company name as the domain name is in most cases the best idea. If your company name is either irrelevant, or simply unavailable, you may want to consider a domain that has your target phrase listed as part of the domain.
A great example of this is if your site is focused geographically. Using the location as part of the domain when possible will give you a little extra juice with the search engines and help draw people to your site as they instantly can see the relevance in the domain.
Let's say that you are building a website focused on your home town, "Somewhere USA". A domain you may consider could be "Somewhere.com"; however, this would probably be already taken. Other options such as "SomewhereInfo.com" or "SomewhereGuide.com" may be good alternatives. The same goes for retail stores. "SomewhereCameras".com or "SomewhereBakery".com would also be good choices.
Avoid excessive use of hyphens; sometimes it is appropriate to use one, but if you can help it, avoid more than that as it can appear messy and even spammy in some cases.
Step 3 - System Back End
If you plan on having a large scale website that will grow and change constantly then you may want to consider a content management system (CMS) such as Joomla. If you decide to go this route, you want to ensure that whichever CMS you choose is search engine friendly and offers items such as unique title tags, custom URL's, and full control over content, heading tags, image alt tags, etc.
Starting a website using a non-friendly CMS is like buying a car without an engine. Sure it may look great, but it won't get you anywhere.
Read More...
Even before you choose your domain name, you should put a little time into some keyword research. Research all the possible keywords that will fit your industry and the website you plan on building. Having a clear idea of what your end targets are will make the rest of your job much easier and help things to just fall into place. Take a look at Keyword Research for SEO , written earlier this summer, for more help on this.
Step 2 - Domain Selection
If you already have an established brick and mortar business and the website will be an extension of that business, using your company name as the domain name is in most cases the best idea. If your company name is either irrelevant, or simply unavailable, you may want to consider a domain that has your target phrase listed as part of the domain.
A great example of this is if your site is focused geographically. Using the location as part of the domain when possible will give you a little extra juice with the search engines and help draw people to your site as they instantly can see the relevance in the domain.
Let's say that you are building a website focused on your home town, "Somewhere USA". A domain you may consider could be "Somewhere.com"; however, this would probably be already taken. Other options such as "SomewhereInfo.com" or "SomewhereGuide.com" may be good alternatives. The same goes for retail stores. "SomewhereCameras".com or "SomewhereBakery".com would also be good choices.
Avoid excessive use of hyphens; sometimes it is appropriate to use one, but if you can help it, avoid more than that as it can appear messy and even spammy in some cases.
Step 3 - System Back End
If you plan on having a large scale website that will grow and change constantly then you may want to consider a content management system (CMS) such as Joomla. If you decide to go this route, you want to ensure that whichever CMS you choose is search engine friendly and offers items such as unique title tags, custom URL's, and full control over content, heading tags, image alt tags, etc.
Starting a website using a non-friendly CMS is like buying a car without an engine. Sure it may look great, but it won't get you anywhere.
Read More...
Are SEO Rates Increasing or Decreasing ?
As search engine optimization has become increasingly popular over the past couple of years from individuals, to small business owners, to the largest corporations in the world implementing SEO tactics, the question is if the rate for this service is increasing or decreasing?
SEO without a doubt is a skill. Many have made great careers out of it, many have made millions of dollars out of it, and now many are getting into it. With hundreds of blogs and forums discussing SEO, the information to optimize is out there, but if you’re not deep in the game (up-to-date) you wont reach the level of success you need.
Its hard to put a price on SEO since I’m not even sure there is an industry standard. You have individuals having their rates, in-house companies hiring for optimization of their website, and than you have the large agencies who charge companies for SEO.
How can you put a price on getting good rankings. We all know (for those that have achieved it or paid for it) a number #1-4 position in Google for a high volume keyword will literally make your business explode over night. Until this day, I dont know anyone whose reached the level of success that my partners had doing SEO (I’m sure others have as well) for such competitive keywords but would never accept outside work. Why do it for someone else when you can do it for yourself?
With the growing demand of small business and medium size business wanting SEO, there has been a growing amount of “SEOs”. Now, depending on the companies budget, you can get pay for your good SEO or have Joe Shmo abroad doing your SEO work which most likely will amount to you spending the little money you have and showing nothing for it. Let’s face it, go to eLance and see how many shmocks are promoting SEO services that offer web submission services, etc.
Read More....
SEO without a doubt is a skill. Many have made great careers out of it, many have made millions of dollars out of it, and now many are getting into it. With hundreds of blogs and forums discussing SEO, the information to optimize is out there, but if you’re not deep in the game (up-to-date) you wont reach the level of success you need.
Its hard to put a price on SEO since I’m not even sure there is an industry standard. You have individuals having their rates, in-house companies hiring for optimization of their website, and than you have the large agencies who charge companies for SEO.
How can you put a price on getting good rankings. We all know (for those that have achieved it or paid for it) a number #1-4 position in Google for a high volume keyword will literally make your business explode over night. Until this day, I dont know anyone whose reached the level of success that my partners had doing SEO (I’m sure others have as well) for such competitive keywords but would never accept outside work. Why do it for someone else when you can do it for yourself?
With the growing demand of small business and medium size business wanting SEO, there has been a growing amount of “SEOs”. Now, depending on the companies budget, you can get pay for your good SEO or have Joe Shmo abroad doing your SEO work which most likely will amount to you spending the little money you have and showing nothing for it. Let’s face it, go to eLance and see how many shmocks are promoting SEO services that offer web submission services, etc.
Read More....
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Two Ways To Justify SEO In Uncertain Times
During uncertain economic times like these, our advice is to always stick with the fundamentals to maintain business efficiency and progress. No matter what your business model, performing the fundamentals will keep you on-track and in-line for leveraging future success.
If the C-level executives in your company are having any doubts about the value of SEO and are hesitating to release more funding, it’s time to perform a cost-benefit exercise. It’s your job as an in-house SEO manager to reestablish their confidence in the value of SEO as well as your value and the value of your team.
When funding gets in the way, having a narrow focus, putting it on the table, and describing company goals you are committed to are all very important.
1) Leverage Your Paid Search Data
To demonstrate implicit value for SEO, start with a baseline. Show where your key terms currently rank in organic and multiply by the cost-per-click value. Run the numbers for the value of direct clicks with high search intent.
One way to go about this is to calculate an Effective Cost-Per-Click (eCPC) for your organic listings:
1.Access the Keyword Tool within your Google AdWords account.
2.Type your best performing (for instance, 20) keywords.
3.Select descriptive words or phrases and synonyms.
4.Click Get Keyword Ideas.
Read More...
If the C-level executives in your company are having any doubts about the value of SEO and are hesitating to release more funding, it’s time to perform a cost-benefit exercise. It’s your job as an in-house SEO manager to reestablish their confidence in the value of SEO as well as your value and the value of your team.
When funding gets in the way, having a narrow focus, putting it on the table, and describing company goals you are committed to are all very important.
1) Leverage Your Paid Search Data
To demonstrate implicit value for SEO, start with a baseline. Show where your key terms currently rank in organic and multiply by the cost-per-click value. Run the numbers for the value of direct clicks with high search intent.
One way to go about this is to calculate an Effective Cost-Per-Click (eCPC) for your organic listings:
1.Access the Keyword Tool within your Google AdWords account.
2.Type your best performing (for instance, 20) keywords.
3.Select descriptive words or phrases and synonyms.
4.Click Get Keyword Ideas.
Read More...
5 SEO Mistakes that Kill Your Website
If you’re the owner of a small business, you might be tempted to implement an SEO strategy by yourself. After all, it can get costly hiring an expert to do your SEO, and there are several things you can do if you take your time to learn SEO properly. Of course, you also open yourself to making many crucial SEO mistakes.
What follows is a list of 5 common SEO mistakes that will undo all of your hard word. Avoid these at all costs.
1. Targeting Broad Keywords- Let’s suppose you operate a small business that sells doors in Houston. As nice as it would be to rank for the phrase “doors,” the truth is you have absolutely no shot at doing that. Trying to do so is a waste of your time. Instead, you should try to rank for phrases like “hurricane proof doors” or “door installation in Houston.” The more specific your keywords, the more targeted your traffic will be.
2. Keyword Stuffing- As a copywriter, this is my biggest pet peeve. People get so caught up in making sure their keywords are peppered throughout the content that they completely ignore how it reads. Your readers shouldn’t be able to tell that your content has keywords in it. It should read like any other copy. What’s the point of ranking well if your content is unreadable?
3. Design not Crawler-Friendly- In order to give yourself the best chance of ranking well, your design needs to be crawler-friendly. Even though the search spiders have gotten better at crawling flash sites, you should stick with an easy-to-crawl CSS layout. This helps the spiders go through your site in a logical manner to ensure they rank your site properly for the relevant keywords.
4. Disorganized Content- Stop trying to do too much on your webpage. Disorganized content not only hampers your site’s usability, but it also prevents you from targeting additional keywords. Divide your content logically among several pages. This keeps each page short, focused, and targeted on specific keywords. It gives you the best chance of reducing your bounce rate and improving you rankings for multiple key phrases.
5. Ignoring the User- This is probably the most common SEO mistake I see. In a way, it goes back to point #2. If you’re new to SEO, it can be easy to get caught up in tailoring your site to the search engine’s specifications. The problem comes when you place a higher priority on pleasing the search engines than your human users. You should never sacrifice usability for the sake of accommodating the search engines. Instead, you can have the best of both worlds—SEO friendly and user-friendly. Keep your site easy to navigate for both the search spiders and your users. This way, you can convert those high search engine rankings into increased sales for your small business.
Read More...
What follows is a list of 5 common SEO mistakes that will undo all of your hard word. Avoid these at all costs.
1. Targeting Broad Keywords- Let’s suppose you operate a small business that sells doors in Houston. As nice as it would be to rank for the phrase “doors,” the truth is you have absolutely no shot at doing that. Trying to do so is a waste of your time. Instead, you should try to rank for phrases like “hurricane proof doors” or “door installation in Houston.” The more specific your keywords, the more targeted your traffic will be.
2. Keyword Stuffing- As a copywriter, this is my biggest pet peeve. People get so caught up in making sure their keywords are peppered throughout the content that they completely ignore how it reads. Your readers shouldn’t be able to tell that your content has keywords in it. It should read like any other copy. What’s the point of ranking well if your content is unreadable?
3. Design not Crawler-Friendly- In order to give yourself the best chance of ranking well, your design needs to be crawler-friendly. Even though the search spiders have gotten better at crawling flash sites, you should stick with an easy-to-crawl CSS layout. This helps the spiders go through your site in a logical manner to ensure they rank your site properly for the relevant keywords.
4. Disorganized Content- Stop trying to do too much on your webpage. Disorganized content not only hampers your site’s usability, but it also prevents you from targeting additional keywords. Divide your content logically among several pages. This keeps each page short, focused, and targeted on specific keywords. It gives you the best chance of reducing your bounce rate and improving you rankings for multiple key phrases.
5. Ignoring the User- This is probably the most common SEO mistake I see. In a way, it goes back to point #2. If you’re new to SEO, it can be easy to get caught up in tailoring your site to the search engine’s specifications. The problem comes when you place a higher priority on pleasing the search engines than your human users. You should never sacrifice usability for the sake of accommodating the search engines. Instead, you can have the best of both worlds—SEO friendly and user-friendly. Keep your site easy to navigate for both the search spiders and your users. This way, you can convert those high search engine rankings into increased sales for your small business.
Read More...
Press Releases and SEO
Search Engines and News Distribution - The Basics
It is the goal of search engines to help people find relevant content online including news content. It is the role of services like PRWeb to help people disseminate relevant news-oriented content online - search engines as a consumption facilitator, news distribution services as a production facilitator.
Now, everything else really stems from this core symbiotic relationship between search engines and news distribution services.
Tactically, search engines use different types of algorithms to determine what is relevant to a query. What distinguished Google in the late 90s was the PageRank algorithm, which placed a lot of value in the importance of back links in determining the relevance of a page.
Now, since then, the algorithm has changed quite a bit. These changes have been spurred for proactive reasons (breakthroughs made by Google’s über-talented engineers) and reactive reasons (to combat black hat SEO tactics). For instance, the practice of selling links or ‘link farming’ has compelled Google to make tweaks to their algorithm so these types of practices result in negative and not positive gains for perpetrators.
Anchor Text
Now let’s take this one level deeper and look at the concept of PRWeb’s usage of anchor text as a tool for search engine optimization. As the Google Webmaster blog states, “Writing descriptive anchor text, the clickable words in a link, is a useful signal to help search engines and users alike to better understand your content.” In other words, the anchor text helps explain to search engines affinities that may exist between keywords and a Web site.
On a simplistic level, PRWeb takes content from an originator and then moves it around the Web and gets it to people who consume that content and then often do something with it (like write about it). When they receive this content it includes the anchor text and when they discuss the content from the news release, more often than not they will include that anchor text in their hyperlink. Over time, the aggregate of all these individual bloggers, Web sites, etc. using anchor text and linking back to a destination site will have benefits for that destination site.
Read More...
It is the goal of search engines to help people find relevant content online including news content. It is the role of services like PRWeb to help people disseminate relevant news-oriented content online - search engines as a consumption facilitator, news distribution services as a production facilitator.
Now, everything else really stems from this core symbiotic relationship between search engines and news distribution services.
Tactically, search engines use different types of algorithms to determine what is relevant to a query. What distinguished Google in the late 90s was the PageRank algorithm, which placed a lot of value in the importance of back links in determining the relevance of a page.
Now, since then, the algorithm has changed quite a bit. These changes have been spurred for proactive reasons (breakthroughs made by Google’s über-talented engineers) and reactive reasons (to combat black hat SEO tactics). For instance, the practice of selling links or ‘link farming’ has compelled Google to make tweaks to their algorithm so these types of practices result in negative and not positive gains for perpetrators.
Anchor Text
Now let’s take this one level deeper and look at the concept of PRWeb’s usage of anchor text as a tool for search engine optimization. As the Google Webmaster blog states, “Writing descriptive anchor text, the clickable words in a link, is a useful signal to help search engines and users alike to better understand your content.” In other words, the anchor text helps explain to search engines affinities that may exist between keywords and a Web site.
On a simplistic level, PRWeb takes content from an originator and then moves it around the Web and gets it to people who consume that content and then often do something with it (like write about it). When they receive this content it includes the anchor text and when they discuss the content from the news release, more often than not they will include that anchor text in their hyperlink. Over time, the aggregate of all these individual bloggers, Web sites, etc. using anchor text and linking back to a destination site will have benefits for that destination site.
Read More...
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
SEO your individual blog posts
Optimizing individual blog posts for your human readers as well as the search engines is as important as optimizing your entire blog. In fact it is much more beneficial, and easier to search engine optimize individual blog posts rather than focusing on the entire blog, and this reasserts the importance of sticking to the quintessential theme of your blog.
Many blogs become famous not for their overall content but for the amount of attention some of their posts get from all over the Internet. That’s why more emphasis is given to the quality of individual posts because any post can turn you into a blogging superstar. I am not an SEO expert but my experience tells me that if you stick to the following guidelines you can search engine optimize your individual blog posts. Please keep in mind that you rankings depend on lots of other factors.
Make your title straightforward, compelling, and use your primary keywords in the title
Some SEO and blogging experts insist that your blog post title is the most important component of your blog post but I slightly disagree because I think the most important component of your blog post is the content of your blog post. Have a great title and mediocre content and in just a few moments your title is declared bogus.
Read More...
Many blogs become famous not for their overall content but for the amount of attention some of their posts get from all over the Internet. That’s why more emphasis is given to the quality of individual posts because any post can turn you into a blogging superstar. I am not an SEO expert but my experience tells me that if you stick to the following guidelines you can search engine optimize your individual blog posts. Please keep in mind that you rankings depend on lots of other factors.
Make your title straightforward, compelling, and use your primary keywords in the title
Some SEO and blogging experts insist that your blog post title is the most important component of your blog post but I slightly disagree because I think the most important component of your blog post is the content of your blog post. Have a great title and mediocre content and in just a few moments your title is declared bogus.
Read More...
Monday, October 20, 2008
SEO Copywriting
SEO Copywriting words or search engine optimization copywriting is the name given to the art or the art of writing a search engine content comfortable.The technique of SEO Copywriting involves writing a text made viewable on any Web page to which it is not only interesting to go but also incorporates the specific terms of the search called keywords or key phrases based on what one could find this Web page on various search engines.SEO Copywriting can be done or the various elements of a Web page to the page most of Search Engine comfortable.These elements include the title, alt text, description of major labels as well as the keyword.
Importance of SEO Copywriting
The main idea behind writing the copy or SEO Copywriting is to raise graduation or affixing a Web site based on the items outlined in the search for which it is written for the major search engines. Search engines are always on the look out for fresh content pages and genuine.Thus,if your Web site has incorporated real happy pages with keywords or phrases competitive in the right position, then your Web site has a better chance of placement in a search engine and found if you perform a search based on those words or key phrases.
The experts at the Search Engine copywriting think that to make the contents Search Engine comfortable in an effective Web site,keyword or phrase should be pointed mention once or twice. These key words or phrases must be placed strategically if it has to be detected easily by a Search Engine.Plus the number of words in the content over the number of times that the phrase has to be relaunched dominant.The ideal density of the keyword should always be about search engines from 3 to 4% could drop another way paging as a whole. Read more ...
Importance of SEO Copywriting
The main idea behind writing the copy or SEO Copywriting is to raise graduation or affixing a Web site based on the items outlined in the search for which it is written for the major search engines. Search engines are always on the look out for fresh content pages and genuine.Thus,if your Web site has incorporated real happy pages with keywords or phrases competitive in the right position, then your Web site has a better chance of placement in a search engine and found if you perform a search based on those words or key phrases.
The experts at the Search Engine copywriting think that to make the contents Search Engine comfortable in an effective Web site,keyword or phrase should be pointed mention once or twice. These key words or phrases must be placed strategically if it has to be detected easily by a Search Engine.Plus the number of words in the content over the number of times that the phrase has to be relaunched dominant.The ideal density of the keyword should always be about search engines from 3 to 4% could drop another way paging as a whole. Read more ...
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