Search Engine Optimization 101 - A Straightforward Introduction To SEO

If you have ever searched for a product, chances are you have used one of the three most popular search engines. Google, Yahoo and MSN account for over 84% of all internet searches and provide thousands of search results that, more often than not, go unexplored. Getting listed as close to the top of the search results can be a tricky business but the process of getting you there is called Search Engine Optimization or SEO.

A highly complex and secretive series of algorithms hidden from public view make it extremely difficult to determine exactly what search engines are looking for, but assessing certain characteristics from sites that rank in the first few pages can be done with reasonable accuracy. By using key strategies like the domain name, keywords, meta tags, indexed pages, internal and external links, page-link alignment and ranking—SEO can significantly help your website respectively place among the top pages.

Domain Name

The domain name is the unique identifier for your website, e.g., 'my-site.com' is the URL and 'my-site' is the domain name. Studies have shown that containing keywords in your site's URL can boost your search engine ranking. This boost is most significant when your site is very new and has not yet established a good page rank. As your site grows and becomes more efficiently structured and linked, the URL becomes less important. There is also, growing evidence that website URLs will become less important in the future.

Keywords

While keywords are a more traditional form of search engine optimization, they are regarded as a significant consideration amongst the top three search engines. Google, Yahoo and MSN look at the location and frequency of keywords within your pages' text. Simply having a high percentage of keywords will not increase your ranking but having your keywords in the right location can be far more effective. For example, words in the page title and header text can be more effective than in the body of your website. However, this is not to take away from the significance of adding keywords in the actual text on the page. Remember, never sacrifice the quality of your content for your customers to achieve page ranking.

Another factor to consider when adding keywords is the type of words you should use. For example, the words 'gift basket' are searched almost 500,000 times a month but the words 'food gift basket' are searched 300,000 times a month. Gift basket companies that use 'gift basket' have greater competition than those companies that use 'food gift basket'. Surprisingly, adding more descriptive words like 'food' or 'Paris' or 'baby' have the potential to move your site up the page because there is less competition and fewer search results.

Meta Tags

Meta tags are another way for search engines to find and learn about your website, provide information about your page, how current the information is, what the page is about and which keywords represent the page's content.

Typically, search engines display your site's meta tags under your page title in the search results, and a well-written meta tag can help convince customers to choose your website from the list of search results. Meta tags should be included in all of your web pages; if left blank, the search engines simply pull search result descriptions from the top of your web page. While the SEO benefits of meta tags are discounted compared to a few years ago, including relevant quality meta tags should increase your search engine rankings. When writing your meta tags, you should consider these points:

• Use meta tags with care, do not repeat keywords
• Do not include words that are not present on your pages
• Focus on creating an enticing website description

Indexed Pages

An indexed page is a page that has been "spidered" or searched by a search engine. Search engine spiders travel around the internet by following hyperlinks and build a searchable index of content as they go. Search results are the product of indexed pages that have been copied and "cached", or stored by search engines. The more indexed pages you have, the greater the likelihood of being indexed and appearing in search results. In addition to your homepage, it is possible to optimize other pages of your site using niché keywords. For multi-page sites, a site map can be an efficient way of insuring all of your pages are found and indexed by search engine spiders.

Internal and External Linking

The benefits of linking are not quite as black and white as outbound = bad and inbound = good. The name and quality of inbound and outbound links can determine your site's reputation and can provide a substantial boost in search engine ranking. Quality inbound links can allow your site to significantly increase its search engine ranking. It is preferable that inbound links point to the pages you wish to optimize and provide a logical navigation path; this typically means linking to your site's homepage.

A link connecting to your page from a different domain name that is hosted on a different IP address is considered an external link. External linking can provide significant opportunity but can also be risky when it comes to your site's search engine ranking. Having too many outbound links can decrease your sites overall ranking. As well, search engines consider outgoing links to be under your control, so if you link to penalized sites, e.g., link-farms, you can be penalized by search engines.

While search engines continually try to gather the most accurate search results as possible, recently there has been a shift towards assigning external links a significantly higher ranking than internal links. The shift in external versus internal is based on the idea that internal links can be controlled and manipulated by webmasters, whereas external links are from an unrelated IP address and much harder to control. As interesting as this development is, outgoing links continue to play a much smaller role in your site's search engine ranking.

Page-Link Alignment

To make matters more challenging, simply having links structured properly does not result in success. The link text needs to be in alignment with the text found on the linked page. The text found on the page is considered to represent the topic of the page and the link text represents the reputation of that page. Confused yet? Wait, there is more. Properly aligning the topic and reputation is considered one of the easiest ways of creating a top ranked website. Achieved by insuring that the name of the link pointing to your site is not simply 'Click Here', instead it contains your site's keywords. An example of a link-page alignment modification recently done by Giftporto.com was to change the 'Home' link found on all pages to the more keyword rich 'Gift Basket Home'.

PageRank (PR)

Throughout the article, I have been referring to ranking or Page Rank without really defining the significance of it, well here goes. The PageRank is a measurement of how important a search engine like Google thinks your site is. Over the past few years, the importance of a website's page rank has increased as the importance of site's text and domain names have decreased.

PageRank, created by Google founders, is determined by the number of inbound links to your website and the quality of the sites providing those links. Google has decided that important pages usually have more inbound links and therefore measures these links on a scale of 0 to 10. The theory, as defined by Google itself, is that high quality sites receive a higher PageRank based on visitors and traffic to your site. PageRank is a "vote" by all the other pages on the internet. In theory, how much that link increases a site's PageRank is calculated by using the following formula:

PR page A= (Importance of page B) x (# of links to A from B) / (# of links on B page)

Any page that has a link can be considered a site and you are allowed to vote for other pages (sites) you control, therefore, how you structure the link network within your site can increase the PageRank of your homepage or any particular page you wish to focus on.

The structure of your internal links is helpful in providing certain optimized pages. By using different linking structures, the PageRank can be shifted to sites that are more important. In most cases, a website wants its homepage to have the highest PageRank allowing it to appear in the search engine results. To achieve this, the homepage should be the center of your website's linking network. An example would be to have all product pages link to catalogue pages, and then have all catalogue pages link to the home page. Simply having a Gift Basket Home link on all pages should help shift PageRank to the homepage. As the trend towards assigning a higher value to links continues, internal linking structure should be designed around user navigation as well as search engine optimization.

Successfully optimizing your website is an incredibly diverse and ever changing process. From mathematical calculations of algorithms to keywords and PageRank, the benefits of learning the SEO process and incorporating them into your website can be highly rewarding.

Craig Richey is a an employee and in-house SEO specialist for Portolynx.com and he is currently working on the optimization of Giftporto.com

[tags]SEO, Search Engine Optimization, basics, straight forward, introduction, Giftporto, gift baskets,[/tags]

Choosing An SEO Consultant, The Right Keywords, Finding Keywords

A good SEO consultant will not only know the tricks of the trade but also how to use them best. An SEO consultant is as much an artist as the web designer. Whereas the web designer knows all of the tricks of the trade in creating a masterpiece of the internet the SEO consultant is the promoter that makes sure people travel to see it.

When choosing an SEO consultant make sure to find one that is willing to not only work with your website designer, or you if you are doing your own website, but also understands your needs. The most important factor is to make sure that your SEO consultant can work together with your website designer as to not impede their efforts. Do what you did when you chose your web designer. Tell the SEO consultant what you need. Give them a time frame on when you need their services to work. Let them know what your future goals are and find out what they can do for you. Internet marketing and search engine optimization hinge on knowing what keyword or keywords web search surfers are searching for on the web. By doing extensive keyword analysis you can zero in on the best keyword terms to use when setting up pay per click advertising, writing keyword articles, and optimizing web pages.

There are a number of effective tools available for keyword analysis and keyword suggestion.

Yahoo Search Marketing

Yahoo has an excellent tool for helping webmasters and Internet marketers determine what keywords people are searching for on a monthly basis. This tool, located at http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/srch/index.php

Wordtracker

One of the more popular tools for doing keyword research is Wordtracker. WordTracker can be found at http://www.wordtracker.com Simply looking for a great rating among the search results of major search engines like Google, Yahoo or MSN? In any case, you must indulge in finding keywords. Yes, by finding keywords, that are apt and according to your niche market, you will certainly be able to improvise on your search engine ranking.

The purpose of searching keywords is to find out the exact phrases that are requested by people in the searches carried in the major search engines. If your website has the relevant information about the most searched terms and keywords, your website would be rated higher by the major search engines. The entire process of improving search engine ranking for a website is a wide process and is called search engine optimization. . Finding keywords is one of the most important parts of search engine optimization.

To start the keyword search for your website, make a list of the keywords related to your website. You can easily find the keywords by using online keyword services. One popular keyword service provider on the web is word tracker. Using word tracker tools and services, all you have to do is to type a keyword and wait for the list to appear on the computer screen. And you will you have a direct access to hundreds of keywords related to the keyword you have typed in the box.

Mehul vyas is a founding partner and Director of Marketing for Vyas Infotch Pvt Ltd. The firm specializes in the development and implementation search engine optimization technologies and solutions for the improvement of web site placement within the Internet's top search engines. The company is regarded by many to be the world leader in its field, with clients in 57 countries around the world.

software development company India

[tags]software development company india, website designing, search engine optimization, web development,[/tags]

What Constitutes A Complete And Effective SEO Campaign

Unfortunately, not many Search Engine Optimization companies know what this involves. You may see a "one size fits all" package, link popularity development in the form of submitting to link farms, or even the dreaded "Submit Your Site to 1000's of Search Engines" scam. While the basic premise of each of these ideas is true, the execution of them is extremely important.

First of all, your web site needs human attention. A real person should thoroughly analyze your site before any work is done. Get them on the phone and ask them questions. There should be a clear process that the Search Engine Optimization company uses and tailors to each client. The SEO company should also have a clear idea of what your goals are for your web site.

The first step in any work that is done should be keyword research. Like any kind of advertising, you need to know where your target market goes and how they find businesses like yours. The keywords chosen should apply to the theme of the web site. High rankings for these keywords should also be obtainable given your budget. If you are a computer repair shop with one or two locations in a city and can not service computers outside your area, then targeting a term such as "computer repair" is overkill. The cost for obtaining high rankings for a term such as that will be far greater than what you will make from the exposure, as much of your web site traffic will not be targeted enough.

Once keywords have been chosen for the web site, the content should be updated to reflect them. This may include subtle changes to the meta tags, page titles and text headings; or it could involve adding additional sections to the site, rewriting content and reorganizing the web site's structure. It all depends on the specific requirements of the site and market.

Once the on-page content optimization is complete, link popularity development needs to be done. A link development campaign should be done to acquire quality incoming links to the web site. This phase of search engine optimization should take place as soon as possible and can be continued as needed. Reciprocal linking is fine as long as some caution is used. There are many sketchy services out there that use huge networks of gambling and pharmacy sites with no unique content. Always make sure that each incoming link can be interpreted by the search engines as a 'vote' by that site for yours. It is worthless and possibly dangerous if the site links out to link farms and Free-For-All sites (FFA's). Writing articles with a link to your web site, getting people to post on forums and message boards, and advertising or getting links to drive targeted traffic to your site are great methods to use in improving your link popularity.

For the most part, you get what you pay for with Search Engine Optimization. A quick fix will rarely works, and if it seems too good to be true it probably is. Talk to the search engine optimization company about your concerns and make sure they understand your goals. Read their site and make sure they seem legitimate. Ask for results they've obtained for previous clients. Methods that not effective and have a chance to get a site banned include hiding text or links, participating in link farms, keyword stuffing, repeat search engine submissions, and copying web sites to multiple domains.

Proper SEO does not involve tricks. Web sites that have well written and well focused content, have been advertised in one way or another (including link popularity development), and overall are a good informational resource will get traffic from the search engines. Search engines are constantly updating ways to weed out the spamming and illegal SEO methods, so think long term with any search engine optimization campaign.

An expert at organic SEO, John Metzler has held executive positions in the search engine marketing industry since 2001. He is the President of FreshPromo, a Canadian-based company, and services American clients through the SEO firm, SEOTampa.com.

[tags]search engine optimization, seo, web, marketing, internet[/tags]

Feed Me - Satisfy The Search Engines And Your Site's Visitors With Keyword-Rich Content

Search engines love content. Graphics may make your site look great, but a nice picture does not attract a search engine. Or a searcher for that matter. Good, relevant content does.

Search engines aren't all that different from people. When faced with a ton of choices, they want to know which sites are the best. And, the best sites are the ones that give the most accurate and relevant information.

Good content serves three main purposes:

1. Search engines will rank your site higher for keywords and phrases included within your content.

2. Users will return to your site, and recommend it to others

3. Other sites will link to you, which will improve your linking popularity and make your web site visible to the spiders.

But, how do you get good content? Simple. You write it, or get someone else to write it for you, using keywords and phrases your visitors will actually use on a search query.

Feeling a little hot under the collar? Relax. It's not as difficult as it sounds. Anyone can learn to write for crawler search engines. It just takes a little planning, detective work and focus. Ready to begin? Follow the steps below and you'll be writing like a pro in no time.

1. Determine which keywords and phrases you want to target

Before you sit down to write anything, you'll need to decide which keywords and keyphrases are relevant to your site. One of the best ways to do this is to use the Word Tracker keyword tracking service at www.wordtracker.com. Word Tracker receives its data from the Dogpile and Metacrawler search engines and estimates search counts for all other search engines based on its market share. You can sign up for a day, a week, a month or a year.

Another good way to find keywords your visitors are using is to look at your site's server logs. These will tell you what phrases people are using to find your site. Some keywords will be too competitive. For example, the keywords "real estate" will return hundreds, if not thousands of search results, and may not place your site near the top, but "Houston Real Estate" or is more focused and targeted to a particular query.

If you want your site to be included in local and regional searches you may want to design your site with local searches in mind, even if you also market globally. How do you do this? Just include local keywords such as address, city, state, province and zip code in the header or footer of your web pages. For example:

XYZ Business Consultant, 3657 Acacia Avenue, Santa Cruz, California 95067. Tel: 408 746 8954. Located close to San Jose, CA.

That way you have a much better chance of getting a first page listing on a localized search.

2. Scatter your chosen keywords and phrases throughout your text.

Let's say one of the keyphrases you want to target is "cotton duvets". You'll want to weave this phrase throughout your copy without making it sound stilted or contrived. Remember, you still need to persuade your prospects to buy your product, so don't be tempted to write paragraphs like this:

"Our cotton duvets are the softest cotton duvets around. Check out our affordable cotton duvets in our online cotton duvet store now." While it's obvious what your keyphrases are, the two sentences don't exactly encourage your visitor to place an order. Be subtle. Use your keywords to emphasize your point and insert them where they naturally fit, without compromising flow and readability.

3. Review your headings, titles and hyperlinks

Use your keywords in headings, subtitles, page titles (found in the blue bar at the top of your Web browser), bold face and hyperlinks, because these stand out to the search engines. For example, returning to the cotton duvets you may want to change your "contact us" hyperlink to "contact us now about our luxurious cotton duvets." Or, "learn more about how our cotton duvets can keep you warm and snug this winter"

4. Post keyphrase-rich, informative articles on your site

Another great way to fill your site up with keyword-laden content is to post relevant, informative articles. Every article you post on your site adds more content--content that the search engines thrive on. And, if you write each article as if you are giving the spider a good, healthy meal full of essential keywords, they'll devour every word, and index it for future use.

You can also post your articles on article directories such as GoArticles, Article City or IdeaMarketers that offer free content to ezine publishers and website owners. That way you'll spread the word about your site, get some great back links and even free publicity.

5. Publish a Newsletter or Ezine

Newsletters and ezines are another way to add content to your site. If you've written articles already, you get to reuse them, and you can create a newsletter archive section on your website.

6. Post a blog or weblog

Blogs or Weblogs are frequently updated journals. that point to articles elsewhere on the web, and to existing on-site articles. The popularity of blogs have spawned blog services such as Typepad and Blogger which make it easy for non-techies to update their sites and add them to an existing web site. Because both the search engines and your site's visitor's love new, updated information, blogs can be a great way of adding content to your site on a daily basis. You can use a blog to announce company news or comment on industry news, announce new product details or to create a "brand" or "personality" for your company.

Before you begin publishing your blog, think about what you're customers want to know. Then, answer their questions on a daily basis. It won't be long before you'll have them, and the search engines hooked.

About The Author

Julia is an independent copywriter specializing in advertising and search engine marketing services. To learn more about how Julia can help boost your company's profits visit her site at www.juliahyde.com. You may also like to sign up for Marketing Works! Julia's monthly ezine. Visit www.juliahyde.com/form.html or email Julia for details.

info@juliahyde.com

[tags]seo,web,promotion,site,internet,marketing,link,building,campaign,links,gareth,davies[/tags]

Successful Search Engine Optimization

Any successful SEO implementation should include the following:

1. Extensive Keyword Research - Research specific keywords or keyword phrases that will most likely bring the most relevant/targeted traffic to your website. Compile a list of relevant keywords/keyword phrases to optimize for on your home page, landing page, and any other pages of your website. Never try to shoot for very general keywords such as "jewelry" or "furniture". Rather, shoot for more targeted keyword phrases such as "M2 design Bracelets" or "swivel recliner".

2. Site Design Geared Towards Targeted Audience - Design your site content and navigation according to your keyword research and for your target market/audience. Never design your site just for the search engines, rather design your site for your "live" audience (visitors). When it makes sense to do so, plug your keywords into your navigation or web content. Your keyword research will reveal what people are searching for in various ways. Make sure your sites navigation and content showcase the various ways in which people are searching for what you have to offer. Make sure you also include your keywords/keyword phrases in the title/meta/keyword/ALT/Heading tags.

3. Website That Is "Spider/Crawling" Search Engine Friendly. - Use a Free HTML Validator to ensure your site is browser friendly and has no broken links. Having links that don't work will greater reduce your credibility with any potential prospects that tour your site. Make sure your site is more rich in content and less in fancy flash animations/javascript and images. Its not that these don't serve a purpose or should never be used its just that search engines cannot interpret Flash and graphics. Having a large number of images can also slow down how fast your site loads. Use the Website Speed Test found at www.iwebtool.com/speed_test to see how fast your site pages load. Its also a good idea to use HTML links in the top-level main navigation on each of the pages of your site.

4. Descriptive Anchor Text (visible text within a click-able text link) For All The Internal Links Of Your Site - Good descriptive navigational links will help your visitors find their way around your site and find what their looking for. Make it as easy as possible for your visitors to find their way around and use "call to action" links/buttons to get your visitors do what you want them to do once they find what their looking for. Do this and you will see a vast increase in conversions/sales and a greater ROI (return on investment) for your business.

5. Site That Is "Link-Worthy" - Having other sites link to yours is a vital element of any successful search engine optimization, as all of the major search engines place a good deal of emphasis on your sites overall link popularity.

Finally, is your site full of great content and information about your products/services? Does it clearly state the benefits and how it solves your target market/audience problem or problems? Is it a great resource for others? As a visitor can I easily find my way around your site? Does it capture my attention enough to keep me on the site or will I get bored and leave right away? Will other website owners be inclined to link to your site? These are the type of questions that you must answer in order to have a site that others will want to link to.

Any good web analytics tool will measure these results and give you a good indication of how your site measures up to desired results. If you hire an SEO consultant or SEO firm make sure they set you up with one. Eliminate the guesswork as much as possible and make decisions based on monitored website behavior.

Market-Vantage LLC - A Search Engine Optimization Company - specializes in Integrated Web Marketing, helping B2B and B2C companies develop and implement effective Internet marketing strategies for positive impact on business. Please call us at 978-448-4333 or email us at drd@market-vantage.com for a free initial consultation to discuss your specific situation in confidence.

[tags]search engine optimization, seo, anchor text, link buidling, website conversion, keyword research[/tags]

What Is The Google Sandbox Effect

In the age of fair competition you may find it hard to believe that a search engine may hinder the appearance of a new website. This is what is currently believed to be happening on more web servers today. Some programmers have viewed Google as uncomfortable to rank newer websites until they have proven their viability to exist for more than a period of "x" months. Thus the term "Sandbox Effect" applies to the idea that all new websites have their ratings placed in a holding tank until such time is deemed appropriate before a ranking can commence.

However the website is not hindered as much as the links that are reciprocated from other users. Newer links that are created are put on a "probationary" status until again they pickup in rank from other matured sites or placed directly by an ad campaign. The idea behind the hindrance is to prevent a fast ranking to occur on a new website. The usual holding period seems to be between 90 and 120 days before a site would start obtaining rank from reciprocal or back linking.

Some advice has been given to have companies you are going to reciprocate back add your link first to the website. This may help grandfather your site in, thus reducing the waiting time associated with "new" websites. People have noticed a 0 page rank when first signing up and receiving a bolstering 7 page ranking after 4 months. Why the delay? The fact is, that if people realized how easy it would be to get a high ranking, would that take away the credibility of the engine. It depends on whom you ask, but it does seem to be happening frequently to newer subscribers. Do not discontinue back linking, your rank will eventually appear.

Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.sitetube.com. Visit his website for the latest on planning, building, promoting and maintaining websites.

[tags]sandbox,google,pr,pagerank,search engine optimazation,seo[/tags]

A Good SEO Content Provider Can Rapidly Generate Hundreds Of Links For Your Site

Apart from organizing and supervising a content provider for their site (even if it is themselves), the other major SEO task that usually takes up a lot of a webmasters' time has to do with chores related to generating backwards links pointed at their site.

Everybody knows that links are very important for SEO purposes, actually as important as finding a provider for good content, if not more so, and yet it is a real headache. Quite often it will involve lots of email communication with many webmasters or bloggers.

Very few site owners realize that a good SEO content provider can be used to help generate lots of quality links for any site. And in fact they can accomplish this task very quickly. Much more rapidly than the traditional method of reciprocal linking. Even fewer webmasters realize that it is actually not too difficult to acquire the SEO content provider skills that can help them use the same methods to generate links pointed at their sites.

The most valuable SEO skill that a content provider needs to create links for a site is that of generating link-baiting article ideas. As the name suggests these are articles that provoke others to almost automatically link to it and your site in large numbers.

Interested in a content provider to write link-baiting articles that will generate lots of valuable links pointing to your site?

[tags]SEO content provider[/tags]

Winning The Search Engine Wars!

Creating and building effective Search Engine marketing campaigns is like trying to nail jello to the wall! The challenge can be daunting to many, requiring very specialized knowledge of process that must be blended with unique and disparate technology. Here is some insight gained from years of experience providing these services to clients.

• SE marketing is very effective in driving qualified traffic to a web site. Over 85% of global surfers utilize Search Engines to find goods and services.

• What can you expect for Search Engine ranking via back-end conversions or desired responses? There is no "silver bullet" answer to this question; we've seen results vary from a low of 1.4% to a high of 22%. You'll make a dangerous assumption if you measure results purely by focusing solely on SE marketing. Your back-end response mechanisms (sales rep interaction, e-commerce fulfillment, newsletter signup, web site, etc.) will greatly affect the ROI. Assess and critique from a holistic perspective.

• It's a zero sum game if you use any of the low cost "we submit to thousands" of search engines service companies. These submissions do very little to drive viable rankings. If you aren't achieving rankings in the top 20-30 (page 1-3) listings then you're wasting marketing resources.

• Don't make the mistake of focusing solely on Search Engine marketing to drive market awareness (online branding) and revenue. Develop mutually reinforcing processes that are synergistic by utilizing Directory submissions, Usenet/Newsgroup seeding, Newsletter sponsorships, Opt-in e-mail, PR and other offline marketing processes.

• Stringent keyword analysis for HTML text is one of the underlying foundations of a successful Search Engine Ranking campaign. It's analogous to the importance of ad copy for a conventional print campaign. Most good SE firms use a commercial database service like WordTracker which enable them to analyze the relative popularity of keywords and then build a submissions and optimization process around the selected keywords.

• The actual Title for your Index and Interior pages will also have a significant impact on whether or not a campaign works. It needs to be the right length, typically 10-20 words, have no hyperbole and pique a searcher's curiosity.

• Contrary to endless marketing hype, there are no quick solutions in this form of interactive marketing. It will take at least 1-2 months before you see any immediate results. And for significant results; i.e., page 1-3 listings via top tier engines add another 2-3 months on top of this on average.

• Web site content development impacts good SE rankings - the more the better. Develop content which is relevant to keywords. We use linguistic analysis software for our clients and then build a standalone "stealth web site" which has content expressly designed for SE spiders (bots). This level of sophistication and proprietary process is expensive and time-consuming but very effective.

• Remember the Armand Hammer quote about Russia? "An enigma wrapped inside a box buried deep in the ocean." This is apropos to the Search Engine world, as the top tier SE's all change their submission rules and algorithms on a regular basis. So hire a SE firm that understands the market - or be prepared to invest a great deal of time to achieve tangible results.

About The Author

Lee Traupel has 20 plus years of business development and marketing experience - he is the founder of Intelective Communications, Inc., http://www.intelective.com, a results-driven marketing services company providing proprietary services to clients encompassing startups to public companies. Lee@intelective.com

Lee@intelective.com

[tags]seo, search engine optimization, search engine ranking, search engine placement[/tags]

The 7 Points Of Do-It-Yourself SEO

Ever felt intimidated at the convoluted, jargon-ridden information about Internet marketing for small businesses available on the Net? Ever been horrified by the huge fees the experts charge, putting search engine optimization beyond your own means? Ever thought: What exactly is search engine optimization anyway, and can I do it myself?

The answer is: Yes, you can! The basics of search engine optimisation in applied web marketing are simple. It's all to do with the keyword content of your text copy, and can be summarised in seven points.

1. Register a good domain name which reflects what your site is about. Even if you are an established business, don't register www.FredJones.com if you make widgets. Rather, you want to register something like www.BestWidgets.com because that would inspire confidence in people looking for quality widgets who would not necessarily have heard of Fred Jones the widget-maker.

2. Name your page URLs based on reasons similar to the above for your web promotion, except now you can be more specific. Search engines like to know what your page is about. Name a page after a product (BigYellowWidgets.htm) or a service or action (Buy-Widgets-by-Post.htm) on one of the sales pages.

3. The text in the title tag is crucial in letting search engines know what each page is about. Put your important keywords in your title tags, using both the singular and plural versions (people will search for both) and make these tags different and specific for each page. For example, "Widgets and After Sales Widget Services". Whatever you do, don't call the home page "Index", but treat it almost as a mini-description.

4. The other tags (at the top of the html page) between the two "HEAD" tags are not as important as the title tag, but the description tag is still used by some search engines in displaying what you would like web users to see when they scroll down a page of search results. Some search engines don't use the description tag at all; others, like Google, sometimes use part of it together with part of the main body text surrounding prominent keywords on your page. So you may as well treat the description tag seriously; make it brief (about 25 to 30 words) and as comprehensive as possible in the short space allowed. Make sure you have your popular keywords included within your description tag. The ALT tag is used for a very short description of an image or graphic file, and is what is displayed if you allow your mouse pointer to hover above a graphic. These days it is not considered important for search engines. The COMMENT tag is never displayed on the body page, and is used by coders and designers as an instruction or reminder to themselves about what that section of html coding should be doing; in the past, some webmasters in their quest for website promotion and search engine ranking used to stuff keywords in the comments tags, but now it is generally acknowledged that the main search engines pay little or no attention to these.

5. Keyword density. Each search engine has its own preference as to how many times a keyword phrase appears on the page in order to signify the relevance of that keyword phrase (in other words, in order to help the search engine understand what the page is about). Around 5 to 8 per cent is a rough guide as to the optimal level. Don't overdo it, otherwise it will be seen as spam or keyword-stuffing. Also use your keywords in the headings tags H1 and H2. There is an H3 tag as well, but it is doubtful whether search engines bother with that, as it is perceived as less prominent on the page, therefore less relevant to what the page is about.

6. Don't forget good linking in your website marketing. Search engines will judge the importance of your web pages to some extent on the number and quality of incoming links from other sites. Ask other webmasters with sites on similar themes to yours for a link, in exchange for a link back. These sites should not be in competition with yours, but should be similarly themed. You may occasionally be asked by other webmasters if they can link to your site. If this is so then have a look at their site; make sure that their site is relevant, that it has at least some Page Rank, and that it just "feels" good, and has no nasty surprises like redirects or unexpected popups. You don't want to be associated with a "bad neighborhood"!

7. Make sure that important keywords are included in the anchor text within inbound links from other sites. This is crucial to search engines when they try to figure out the relevance and importance of your pages. The inbound link from the other site should take the form of something like this (I'm using normal brackets instead of angle brackets so as not to use compromising html): (A HREF="http://www.Yoursite.com")your important keywords included here(/A). You should definitely avoid something like (A HREF="http://www.Yoursite.com")click here(/A), which tells search engines nothing except that your site is about "click here". Be careful!

Gordon Goodfellow is an Internet marketing consultant and practitioner He lives and Works in London, UK, and has helped companies in many industry sectors with clients worldwide. His main site, http://www.applied-web-marketing.com is an introductory resource on Internet marketing for small businesses.

[tags]internet marketing for small businesses, applied web marketing, search engine ranking, web promotion[/tags]

Why Do Search Engines Look For "Inbound Links" For Ranking Websites

Dear friends, ranking high at the search engines for a keyword which has high demand is every marketers dream. No matter what your website about, a fully loaded super store or a hobby site, you need traffic and search engines have a capacity to provide an unending supply of thousands of visitors (if your niche has that much demand) at zero cost.

Actually it would be wrong if we say that search engines send traffic at zero cost. There is a price you need to pay to rank high and that's TIME. Yes, it takes time to reach there.

there are many factors that undergo a normal Search Engine Optimization exercise and building "inbound links" is considered one of the most challenging tasks involved today. To understand better why search engines look for inbound links, let's take a real life example.

For a moment forget the Internet, forget you website/search engines anything that has to do "ranking high", just read this small story.

There was a young boy Jim, about 21 years old. He was a fantastic painter. He painted in water colors on canvas. His favorite subjects were landscapes, natural beauty, mountains, etc...He could spend hours painting and playing with colors. Colors were his passion, his life.

He lived in a small village that was away from a major metro city. With a small population, no one really visited this village very often. Jim was very happy with his passion of painting.

One day Jim's uncle visited his home on a Sunday. When he saw Jim's paintings he thought Jim has got an inborn talent of colors, of looking towards the surrounding beauty that he was able to capture on canvas. His was a special skill that very few people have. So he suggested Jim to move to the city to display his work to people out there. Jim assured him that whenever he gets the opportunity he would definitely make the best of it.

Then the golden day arrived. Jim was listening to a radio station, when he heard the announcement of an exhibiting of paintings to be held in the metro city. Jim thought this is what I was looking for an quickly rushed to the city at his Uncle's place to arrange for the formalities.

Five of Jim's paintings got selected and displayed at the metro city exhibition. He got a tons of post and is still getting from his fans and now the best part is he is making thousands of bucks just from a single painting. He is happy and wealthy too. His passion is keeping satisfied and now he is famous guy. The villagers are proud of having him in their village.

OK... now what's this story got to do with SEO..you ask..

A lot...If you read the story again you will discover that Jim is already happy when he is in his village, spending most of his time with paints and brushes. But when he displays his work out to public, his work is admired by more and more people. It has to do with "numbers". Again when no one knew about his talents, he still was a great painter, but now because now thousands of people say that "Jim is a great painter" his value becomes magnified thousands of times.

Now if Jim launches his website on water color paintings where do you think it must rank.. You see, it's a numbers game. Of course it's also important that who recommends Jim as a great painter. But Jim doesn't care, he's already taken all the care for years polishing his painting skills. All he knows is producing great quality paintings for his customers which are ready to pay him truckloads of money.

There is a simple exercise to do. Put yourself in Google's shoes, imagine that you are Google.com [:-)] and then look at Jim's new website. If I am a regular Google user I will take all the care to see that my search results for the keyword "water color paintings" show up results that are best and most importantly recognized by experts in the art industry.

This is true for every search engine out there, including Yahoo! and MSN, because they want to retain their users.

Here "inbounds links" come into picture. The number and the quality of inbound links is the only way for the search engines to recognize the quality of the website it is supposed to rank. Of course as I mentioned there are many factors that a search engine will look for, but inbound links can have a major impact on your rankings.

Again if Jim wants his website to rank well for many years to come, he will have to keep on producing quality work just the way he is doing now. Most people think that search engines are money machines, just build a website, get is indexed and forget about it. But it is getting a long term goal now a days to rank high at the search engines. As I said it comes at the cost of TIME. If you are ready to go for it, creating traffic through search engines will be one of the most profitable skills you will ever learn in this lifetime.

I hope this article was useful....

Copyright Shrinivas Vaidya

Do you think that inbound links matter a lot to rank high at the search engines? Visit Shrinivas Vaidya's blog on how to suggest link and skyrocket you rank at the search engines.

[tags]seo, search engine optimization, inbound links, incoming links, search engine, rank high[/tags]

Would You Believe-We Submit To 700,000 Search Engines

Submitting to 700,000 or more search engines is all well and good, but do you know anyone who uses any of those obscure search engines, if there are in fact that many in existence?

Please beware throwing good money into bad systems. To help you sort the good from the detrimental, I will take you through some of the promises you may see, and where you may have reason to be skeptical:

1/ Incorrect Information

If the search engine optimisation provider ("SEO") makes statements like "Submitting your web site consistently is the #1 way to get indexed by search engines" you know they are not talking about the most popular search engine to start with! (ref: Footer 1) Just regularly re-submitting your site is not enough to get you good rankings; the search engines are smarter than that.

2/ Use of Automated Submission Tools / Reports

If overused, these may be detrimental to your site's rank. The more sophisticated search engines recognise the URLs of tools that use programs (rather than people) to either continually submit URLs or request ranking information. Use of these tools is one way to get banned from being listed altogether. (ref: Footer 2)

3/ The SEO's / client's search engine rankings

A quick test to see whether all the claims and testimonials stack up for a particular SEO is to do a search via a major search engine, to see where the SEO appears for obvious search terms. Whilst clearly search engine optimisation is going to be a very popular phrase on the internet, the better SEOs should at least have their main URL appear in the first 5 pages of one of your searches. Oh... please don't go looking for my website in the search engines as I've not employed SEO professionals on my site... yet ;-). You should also look for testimonials from clients of the SEO, and test their search engine results for appropriate search terms.

4/ Partners?

If an SEO does not appear in the search engine results, as I've suggested in point 3/ then it seems a little odd when they also claim that they are partners with that search engine. Even worse is where the SEO uses practices specifically warned against by the search engines that they claim to have as partners (see point 6).

5/ Submitting to very large numbers of search engines

The important question here is, who do you know that actually uses the obscure search engines that make up those very large numbers? You are better off spending money on getting good rankings in the handful of search engines that have a patronage that is likely to make a difference to the number of visitors to your site. You may wish to also target specific search engines that focus on a sector that your website falls into eg. a locality search engine.

6/ Doorway Pages / Cloaking

A mention of the use of doorway pages or cloaking techniques should ring warning bells. These techniques were invented years ago, and worked successfully for a time, in improving search engine rankings. However, the better search engines have been aware of these techniques for some time, and can detect when they are being employed. Using these techniques is very likely to get you banned from the most popular search engines. (ref: Footer 3)

For an example of what can go wrong when you use doorway pages and other so-called 'sneaky' techniques, read about BMW Germany being banned from Google here (published on 6th Feb, 2006): http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4685750.stm

* * * * * *

Certainly, not all search engine optimisation is bad - a professional approach utilising a reputable SEO that focuses on helping you achieve the best rankings without trying to trick anyone, is a useful addition to your website marketing arsenal. I recommend a well-rounded approach to website marketing, as described in my article entitled "Build it and they will come?".

Footnotes:

1. Refer to "Fiction: A website will be removed from Google's index if it's 'over-submitted'." on the Google Information page located here: http://www.google.com.au/webmasters/facts.html. The key point made is: "your time is better spent improving the content and links of your site".
2. Refer to "Fiction: Automated 'rank checking' programs are a good way for webmasters to save time and measure their online presence." on this Google Information page: http://www.google.com.au/webmasters/facts.html.
3. Refer to the 'Quality Guidelines - Specific recommendations' section of the Webmaster Guidelines on the Google page: http://www.google.com.au/webmasters/guidelines.html. The key points are: "Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines", and also "Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects".

Copyright Contact Point IT Services. Publication or use of this article on or off-line, without prior written permission from the author, is prohibited. If you would like to use this article on your Web site or in your publication, please contact us with details of your desired use.

Heather Maloney is the owner of Contact Point IT Services (http://www.ContactPoint.com.au). Contact Point provides technology solutions for small to medium sized businesses, focusing on improving and automating business interactions with customers, suppliers and 3rd parties, in order to improve efficiency and customer retention, and achieve business goals.

[tags]SEO, search engine optimisation, search engines[/tags]

Off-Page Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Primer

In the earlier years of search engine optimization, it was all about on-page optimization. Things like the page title, Meta tags, heading tags, comment tags, and anchor text were the only things that mattered. Keyword stuffing could easily get your website to the top of the search engines results page. If I wanted the number one position, all I had to do was copy my competitor's page, add my keyword one more time, and viola – I'd rank first.

These days, things aren't quite that easy. In order to obtain top positioning in the search results, your website has to gain to credibility or "web cred" in order to be recognized as important.

Optimize Your Domain Name

As of this writing, appears that the search engines do weight the fact that your domain name has your keywords in it. Problem is, many SEO professionals and amateurs are exploiting this by registering domains with the keywords in it, separated by dashes. Nobody knows how long the search engines will continue to weight this factor, but none the less, it's probably not a bad idea to include a keyword or phrase in your domain name, but don't get out of hand: www.please-let-google-ban-my-site-because-of-all-these-words.com

The number of years your domain has, and will be, registered for also has an effect on search engine rankings. If you have an older domain name, it is generally concluded that the website is not spam and will probably be around for years to come. This makes sense – Google should give higher priority to a website that's been around for 5 years, than give the high ranking to a brand new, untested website. It may be a good idea to acquire a domain name that been around for a few years and also contains one of your keywords. The downside is that this option may be expensive. If you don't have the budget for that, Google also seems to give credit for the number of years that the domain is pre-registered. I've looked at some data, and it seems that if you register your domain for a few years out, Google assumes you don't have a fly-by-night website and you may be entitled to a slightly higher ranking. Given the miniscule cost of registering a domain name these days, it's probably not a bad idea to register your domain name for 3 years rather than 1.

Page Rank

Google assigns each web page a Page Rank based on the number and quality of inbound links you have pointing to your website. You can view your website's page rank by downloading the Google Toolbar. Your page rank will be displayed as a green bar measuring from 1 to 10. Don't worry if you only have a Page Rank of 1 or 2 – most websites do. In order to get your number up (4 or 5 is pretty good), you'll have to get other websites to link to you.

Quality Counts More Than Quantity

As soon as webmasters realized the importance of back links, numerous schemes were hatched in an attempt to build up thousands back links very quickly. Google has since caught on, and if your website acquires too many low-quality links too fast, you may get penalized. Here are some tips to obtain the best quality back links:

- One-way links are better than reciprocal links. Reciprocal links are being de-valued because it is not natural linking – it's an arrangement between the webmasters. If you can afford it, it may be a good idea to buy some one-way links to your website.

- Get links from pages with a high Page Rank because some of that will pass through to your site, increasing your own site's Page Rank.

- Get links from sites in a related industry or geographical location. I do a lot of web design in my home town of Windsor, Ontario. Therefore, I make sure that I buy or trade links from other web design related sites, Canadian, Ontario, and Windsor directories. Google will see that your site is relevant if you do this.

- Make sure your keywords are included in the link from other sites. If your keyword is included in the anchor text, Google will assume that your site relates to that particular keyword.

- Get a listing in Open Project Directory (DMOZ), if you can. Only the best sites get into DMOZ, and it gives your site a lot of credibility in the eyes of the search engines.

- Don't inter-link your websites! If you think you can just link all of your own websites together and improve your Page Rank, forget it. Google will see that the IP address of all domains is the same, and, either give you little or no credit, or if you have a lot of sites inter-linked, penalize you.

Let last tip I'll leave you with is: make sure to maintain your links. Google, for one, does not immediately give you credit for your links. The age of the link plays an important role, and as the months go by, those links which were maintained for long periods of time will carry a lot of weight. Good Luck!

Paul Coulter owns and operates a custom web design company in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. If you would like to read more web design articles or contact Paul, visit his business's website: Cost Effective Web Design, Windsor ON

[tags]SEO, on-page SEO, search engine positioning[/tags]

Website Optimisation - Do It Like A Pro!

Note: If you are NOT intending to have a really successfull and effective website, please close this window right now!

But if you're at all serious about being a part of the Internet, then it is essential that you carefully consider this article...

Before going further with the web design plan, you have to take into consideration two main issues:

1) "Why should someone visit my website?"

This is the most important issue you should take into account before designing your website.

I'll give you an example, there is this entrepreneur... John. He owns a business, he makes money from selling gardening tools.

John has lots of "coming-back" clients because his products are of top quality, cheaper than other competitors' and from time to time he makes big discounts.

One day he thought it would be a good ideea to keep in touch with his customers using a website, on the Internet.

And guess what!? It worked! Now John has more control of his clients, he constantly makes them new offers, and most important... his earnings are huge because his website is easy to find.

This small change improved the relationship with his clients and on top of that, brought new customers from "outside".

The result: John quickly found out that people are into gardening more than he could ever imagine! :-)

That's why you should ask yourself, "Why should someone visit my website?".

The next issue I'll bring into discussion is :

2) "What kind of products or services am I offering?"

Yes, it's a simple question but it has a shocking influence over your website.

Think... If John is selling gardening tools, would he ask for a website which looks like a toys selling shop? Of course not!

Before moving on, if you have trouble answering the first question, I'll give you a hand and reveal a good tip:

Tip: "Do your clients' characteristics have anything in common?"

Try to think about this question for a moment.

A large scale experiment regarding color psychology shows that men tend to like the blue color as their favorite one while green takes the second place.

Women don't act the same way as men do. It's a matter of sex, location, cultural diversity, etc.

You must think about what category of people you aim at, who is more likely to visit your website?

In conclusion, today's homework is to think about why should someone visit your website and what defines that person.

You have to know your visitors' psychology before spending any cent.

About the author: Vladimir Ghetau is specialized in professional Web Development. He created the Domain Name Generator, a web application which helps you to choose a good domain name.

[tags]seo,promotion,optimization[/tags]

The Worst SEO Mistakes That Lead To Lowering Your Search Engine Ranking

Though there are many different theories out there regarding what makes the best SEO technique, when it comes to some issues that will work against your SEO efforts, there are some issues where everyone agrees. Among these, the most prominent are:

• Not having a web page title
• Using too many graphics, images, or flash animation on a given web page
• Having a menu system that is prohibitively complex

It is extremely important that every web page on your site has a title. Without providing a descriptive title that is search engine optimized with the right keywords, you'll not only hurt your ranking, but you'll turn visitors away. Consider it the equivalent to owning a store without a sign and with blackened windows. To make sure that you're doing your best on that level, make certain that each web page on your site has its own unique title that is specific to its content. Try to make sure that it includes the primary keyword for that page, to ensure proper SEO for search engine spiders.

By using too many graphics, images, or flash animation, you may be pleasing the eye, but search engine spiders won't see it the same way. Search engines focus on the text content of your website. Their spiders crawl through your site looking for text, keywords, and other indications of purpose. They cannot, however, understand images or flash animations, nor will they ever understand their appeal. Therefore, though images are great ways to add appeal to your visitors, by adding too much to any given web page, you're decreasing the value of your search engine optimization. To reduce this problem, try to create a balance on your page where the text content is given the true priority, and images, graphics, and flash animations are only a compliment, not a focus for the page. You can also help your website by adding alt tags to each of your images so that you are providing the search engine spiders with a bit of text, even when it's an image that actually shows up on the page.

The menu system of your website is the key to being able to properly navigate around it. Search engine spiders are typically considered to be relatively basic programs and struggle with anything but the most primitive menu systems. For example, if your menu involves JavaScript or a Java applet, the search engine spider will not be able to recognize any of the features, and will not be capable of properly navigating the site. Certainly, these can be very appealing to people, but search engine spiders don't have the same ability to interpret the features of a website as people do. For proper search engine optimization, a simple textual link is your best option as it is the easiest for a search engine spider to understand. It makes your site much more likely to be seen in full by the spider, and therefore receive the best indexing and ranking results. Furthermore, the majority of the time, an extremely complicated menu system can quickly be replicated and implemented using textual links and CSS. This will make an enormous difference in your SEO results, and will be welcomed by all of your visitors who are still using dial-up and other slow connections.

If you must use a complex menu or site navigation system, then make sure that you at least provide a site map that is readily available via a text link from the home page. This site map should use text to clearly link to every one of the other pages of your web site. This way, even if a spider is unable to use your regular menu system, it will be able to reach all of the pages by way of the site map.

By carefully watching to make sure that you've avoided these mistakes, you'll be making a big difference in your odds of achieving high ranking due to your search engine optimization efforts. You'll refrain from working against your own SEO efforts due to simple errors, and will enjoy much larger amounts of traffic to your website.

Copyright 2006 Mark Nenadic

Mark Nenadic

Mark is the director and face behind FifteenDegrees-North http://www.15dn.com, where you will find articles and resources to help with SEO, marketing and Web design.

[tags]search engine optimization[/tags]

SEO Expert Guide - Search Engines Explained (part 110)

Before we explore the world of search engine optimization, it is vital that you know a little about how search engines work and their relative market shares. It will help you to prioritize your activities later!

(a) What are Search Engines and who powers them?

There are essentially four different parts to a typical large search engine; the crawler, the directory, sponsored results and the search engine itself.

Crawlers (e.g. Google) automatically visit web pages to compile their listings, making use of a so-called robot or spider (eg. Googlebot), which follows links from one website to another, ultimately compiling an index of all the pages and sites on the internet. These crawlers provide an index, which can then searched by the search engine. You may find that several or all of the pages on your site are indexed in thisway. Some search engines have their own crawler and others buy-in crawler results from others.

Human-powered directories, such as the Open Directory, rely on submissions from the public, which are reviewed by editors for inlusion in the directory. If you get included in a directory, generally only one page from your site (usually your home - or index - page) will be listed.

Crawled results are combined with sponsored results, supplied by pay-per-click (PPC) advertisers, and the results from human-maintained directories to complete the search engine index. Check out the Search Engine Reationship Chart at Bruce Clay inc. for the latest picture on who powers whom. You will note a couple of things right away. Firstly, the dominance of the Google and Yahoo! crawlers and secondly the importance of DMOZ directory results as a back-door for many search engines.

(b) How do Search Engines find and rank sites?

Search engines do not really search the web directly, but rather an index database of the full text of web pages, which itself is drawn from the billions of web pages on the internet's servers. Search engine databases are selected and built by computer robot programs called spiders.

If a web page is never linked to by any other page, spiders cannot find it, unless the (usually new) site is submitted manually by a human at the search engine's "add URL" page. All search engine companies offer ways to do this.

After spiders find pages, they pass them on to another computer program for "indexing." This program uses an "algorithm" to assess the text, links, and other content in the page for "key words" that might be searched on at the engine. This allows the search engine to order results served by their "relevancy" to the search terms used. As each search engine has a different algorithm, it will index sites in a different way and thus serve up different relevant results.

Some types of pages and links are excluded from most search engines by policy. Others are excluded because search engine spiders cannot access them. Generally, the use of frames, flash graphics and dynamic URLs all get in the way of effective spidering and should thus be avoided.

In addition to indexing pages, most algorithms seek to establish the "authority" of a site. A site which is linked to by many other sites (using keyword-rich anchor text) is assumed to be of greater merit than one with no links at all. This activity is called "ranking" and helps search engines to sort otherwise similar results into ever-more relevant and authoratative results.

(c) Which Search Engines are the most popular?

Based on US analysis in January 2005, the top search engines (by share of total searches at home and work) are as follows:

Google Search - 47%

Yahoo! Search - 21%

MSN Search - 13%

All Others - 19%

These shocking figures do not convey the true dominance of the top players, as you have seen from the interdependence of search provision in section (a) above. You could be searching at AOL (part of the "other" 19%) and viewing Google results, for example.

There is also strong anecdotal evidence that Yahoo! and MSN tend to send more searchers through to their sponsored (or paid) results than do Google (due to the prominence of these results on their results pages). As such, for a typical small webmaster who does not use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, they might get up to 80% of all their traffic from Google's various sites across the world.

Now you understand the market a little better, you will perhaps understand the obsession many webmasters have with Google! A top-10 position at Google for your key search terms can make your online business fly. If you drop out of that top-10, your business can literally collapse overnight!

Don't forget these key stats as you embark on your optimization journey...

Navigate the guide

Previous: SEO Expert Guide - Index of Contents

Next: SEO Expert Guide - Proposition Development (part 2/10)

David Viney (david@viney.com) is the author of the SEO Expert Guide; how to get to the top of the search engine rankings and stay there.

Find out more about David's SEO services or purchase the full copy of the book from the SEO Expert site.

[tags]seo,search,engine,optimization,key,words,tips,tricks,services,expert,traffic,page,rank[/tags]

A SEO Checklist

Search engine optimization is on every webmaster's mind these days. Achieving a favorable ranking for the right keywords can mean a steady stream of targeted traffic to your site, and all for free - that's hard to beat. The key to high search engine rankings is structuring your website correctly, including plenty of content that is relevant to your keywords, and making sure your website is spider-friendly. You can use this checklist to make sure all of your Web pages can be found, indexed and ranked correctly:

Your website is themed.  Your site deals with an identifiable theme which is obvious from the text on the home page and reinforced by all the other pages on your site. In other words, all the individual Web pages relate to each other and deal with various aspects of some central theme. The text on your home page should state clearly what that theme is and what your website is about, and the other pages should reinforce that.

Your Web pages have enough high quality, relevant content.  Spiders come to your website looking for content. If a page doesn't have much content, or the content doesn't appear closely related to the page's title and your website's theme, the page probably won't be indexed or if it is indexed it won't rank well. Search engines love quality content and lots of it - content is what Web searchers are looking for and search engines try to provide.

Your website's navigational structure is relatively flat.  You don't want important pages to be too "deep" within your website, meaning it takes several clicks to get there from the home page. Search engines typically index the home page first, then gradually index other pages on a site over time. Many spiders are programmed to only go three layers deep - if some of your important content is buried deeper than that, it may never be found and indexed at all.

You've created a unique "Title" tag for each page.  The title is one of the most important aspects of any Web page from an SEO standpoint, especially for Google (which is the most important search engine to optimize for). Don't use a generic title for all your pages, use the keywords your targeting for that page and keep it brief but descriptive.

You use the "Description" meta tag.  Contains a highly descriptive sentence about the content and purpose of your page, and contains your most important keyword phrase early in the sentence. Not all of the search engines will display this "canned" description when they list the page in search results, but many of them will, so it's worth getting it right.

You use the "Keywords" meta tag.  As with the meta tag description, not every search engine will use the keywords meta tag. But some will use it and none will penalize you for having it. Also, having a short list of the keywords you're targeting will help you write appropriate content for each page. The keyword tage should contain your targeted keyword phrase and common variations, common misspellings and related terms. Make sure your keywords relate closely to the page content and tie into the overall theme of your site.

Your keywords are included in the visible page content, preferably high up on the page.  You have to achieve a balance here - you want to include keyword phrases (and variations) a number of times within your text, but not so many times that you appear to be guilty of "keyword stuffing". The trick is to work the keywords into the text so that it reads as naturally as possible for your site visitors. Remember, you can incorporate keywords into any Web page element that is potentially viewable by site visitors - header text, link text and titles, table captions, the "Alt" attribute of the image tag, the "title" attribute of the link tag, etc.

Every page of your website can be reached by search engine spiders.  This is critical - if your pages can't be found, they can't be indexed and included in search results, let alone rank well. Search engines use spiders to explore your website and index the pages, so every page must be accessible by following text links. If pages require a password to view, are generated by a script in response to a query, or have a long and complicated URL, spiders may not be able to read them. You need to have simple text links to the pages you want indexed.

You've included a site map.  Unless your site is very small, it's a good idea to create a site map with text links that you link to the site map from your home page. In addition to a link, include descriptive text for containing the relevant keywords for each page.

You link to your most important pages from other pages on your site.  Internal links help determine page rank since they show which pages of your site are most important. The more links you have to have to a page, relative to other pages on your site, the more importance search engines will assign to it.

You use keywords in your link text.  When you create a text link to another page on your site, use that page's targeted keywords as the text for the link (inside the anchor tags that create the link). Make it as descriptive as possible. For example, a link that says "Premium Customized Widgets" is much better than one that says simply "Product Page", and indicates to search engine spiders what that linked page is about.

Your site doesn't use frames.  If possible, don't use frames on any page you want to get indexed by search engines. If you feel you simply must use frames for a page, then also make use of the "noframes" HTML tags to provide alternative text that spiders can read (and make that text descriptive rather than just a notice that "This site uses frames etc. etc.").

You don't use automatic page redirects.  Don't make any pages automatically redirect the visitor to another page (the exception is a page you've deleted for good - in which case you should use a "301 redirect", a permanent redirect which is acceptable to search engines).

Your important content is in plain text and not contained in images.  Search engine spiders can't "read" content in JPEG, GIF, or PNG files. If you really feel that using an image rather than text is crucial to your design, at least put the same text in the image's "Alt" tag (or in the "title" tag if you're using the image as a hyperlink).

Your important content is not contained in Flash files.  Flash is a wonderful technology, but unfortunately spiders don't have the required "plugin" to view Flash files. As a result, Flash content is mostly inaccessible to search engine spiders. Some can find and follow hyperlinks within the Flash file, but unless those links lead to pages with readable HTML content this won't help you much. Don't create all-Flash pages for any content you want to get indexed - instead, put that content in the HTML portion of the page.

Links and keywords are not hidden inside JavaScript code.  If your links use JavaScript to direct the user to the appropriate page (for instance, a drop-down list) or important content is contained within JavaScript code (when it's displayed dynamically using DHTML, for instance) search engine spiders won't be able to "see" it. You can, however, use the "noscript" HTML tags to provide an alternative that can be read by spiders.

You've optimized every important page of your website individually.  Don't stop at your home page. Take the trouble to optimize any page which has a reasonable chance of being indexed by the major search engines, targeting appropriate keywords for each. If you face a lot of competition it may be nearly impossible to get a top ranking for your home page, but you can still get a lot of search engine traffic to your site from other pages which are focused on very specific keyword phrases.

You didn't duplicate content.  Each page of your site should have unique content that distinguishes it from every other page on your site. Duplicating content or having pages that are only slightly different might be seen as "search engine spamming" (trying to manipulate search engine results).

You provide linking instructions for those who want to link to your site.  Somewhere on your site state your policies about other people linking to your site and provide the wording you'd like them to use in their link. You want to encourage other people to link to your site, preferably using link text and a description that reflect the keywords for that page. For their convenience provide the ready-made HTML code for the link - not everyone will use it, but most often they will use your preferred text as a courtesy as long as it is truly descriptive of your site and doesn't contain "marketing hype".

You provide linking instructions for those who want to link to your site.  Somewhere on your site state your policies about other people linking to your site and provide the wording you'd like them to use in their link. You want to encourage other people to link to your site, preferably using link text and a description that reflect the keywords for that page. For their convenience provide the ready-made HTML code for the link - not everyone will use it, but many will use your preferred text as a courtesy as long as it doesn't contain "marketing hype".

Important hyperlinks are plain text links and not image links or image maps.  Text links are better from an SEO standpoint than image links, as spiders can't read text from an image file. If you feel you really must use a graphic as a link, at least include a text description which (including the relevant keywords) by using the "title" attribute of the link tag.

Your website is free of coding errors and broken links.  HTML coding errors and non-working links can keep search engine spiders from correctly reading and indexing your pages. For that reason, it's a good idea to use a Web page validation utility to check your HTML code to make sure it's error-free.

Jane McLain is a Web developer and SEO specialist and the webmaster of EClaunchsite.com, an online resource center for netrepreneurs with tools and information to help you plan, build, launch and grow your e-business.

[tags]SEO, search engine, search engines, optimization, guide[/tags]

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Losing Ground

Research has shown that SEO strategies are becoming increasingly ineffective. This is due to the flawed objective of SEO methods. Metaphorically speaking, someone teaching SEO methods is like a teacher providing answers and biased guides to students before an exam.

What happens is, as the exam papers are changed regularly, and new formats replace the old one, the guides provided by the teacher gets obsolete ever so frequently. And when that happens, the teacher has to provide new answers and guides to make sure the students are up to the task.

What's wrong with that?

Well, the 'exams' you're sitting for is not the usual stagnant ones. As Yahoo! And Google enhance their search engine algorithms constantly, the answers and guides given by your teachers are becoming, essentially, useless.

And there is a limit to how far you teacher can keep up with the exams.

Therefore, I, suggest a new and more effective method of building traffic. So simple, but oh so brilliant! Number one priority for any online businessmen is, build up high-quality content related to your business.

Metaphorically speaking, by building high-quality content, you don't even need a teacher! All you have to do is make sure you get the concept right, and the marks will come through automatically! It doesn't matter how many times the exam papers are changed, 2 X 2 will always be 4.

This is because the spiders employed by Yahoo!, Google and so on are being optimized constantly to think like humans. In the past years they could be fooled easily by shady websites who put on a show, but lack in real content. But now, they are ranking pages based on human reaction!

For example, your website would be more favorable in the eyes of a spider if surfers stay longer in your website than a rival's (common sense). Also, they would monitor the surfer's actions in your website.

"Is he going through the other pages of the website?" and so on.

No SEO strategy can combat these modern spiders. That's why, instead of trying to stay ahead of the spiders, form a partnership with them! Make them genuinely LIKE your website!

All in all, if you want to sustain your online business, you better make sure that you build terrific content. After all, you have nothing to lose but everything to gain from changing your perception of achieving a high ranking in the search engines.

That said, SEO still plays a major part in staying ahead of today's search engine's algorithms. You still do need to do the basic search engine optimization methods, like adding keywords, submitting your pages to the search engines. However, do keep in mind on what's REALLY important (it starts with a 'c').

[tags]article submission, articles, writers, writing, publishing, ezine, email marketing, email newsletter, email[/tags]

Search Engine Optimization For The Rest Of Us

When you have launched your website, whether it is an eCommerce store or a corporate promotional site, you must have set certain goals regarding the quantity of traffic you are expecting to have on your site. If you did not pursue your goal with specific web promotional marketing strategies, chances are there you are not very happy with the results you have achieved so far. Although, there are numerous web promotional methods available to your disposal, optimizing your web pages for search engines is the uncontested leader in this field. If you sell products or services through your website, it is even more so for you.

Consider this. Out of various possibilities which include: going to a shop, calling a shop, etc. the prospective buyer decided to search for the product online. Then she used certain key-phrase to make a query on a search engine and then among other sites, she chose yours to click in. As a seller this is the kind of visitors you need for your site! Search engines have more than twice the e-commerce conversion rate of other traffic acquisition sources. You can get these results for your site with the help of search engine optimization.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

SEO is a set of actions carried out with a webpage to improve visibility of that webpage in search engines. The goal is to ensure top places in the search engine results for a specific query.

How important are the search engines? Data show 81 percent of Internet users find the sites they're looking for through search engines. Over 57% of Internet users search the Internet everyday. Up to 500 Million searches take place in a day. 55% of all Internet purchases originate at a search engine as oppose to 9 percent from banners. These statistics are pretty convincing, but surprisingly, according to StatMarket.com only 7 percent of websites are visible by search engines.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can really bring amazing results. Our page http://trade-leads.rusbiz.com recently started to show on the first page of Google for the search phrase "trade leads". Within the last month we have noticed almost 30 percent increase of traffic to this page which is pretty much inline with the available statistics. If your optimization efforts started to bear fruits and you ended up on the second or third page of Google search, you can expect a dramatic increase of almost 5 times more traffic than before and after two months it can be over 9 times! An upward move from 2nd and 3rd pages to the much coveted first page will bring an increase of around 30 percent. Along with the traffic the conversion rate – the quantity of actual purchases – also goes up significantly.

Your position within the first page also makes a lot of difference. The top positioned web page in the sponsored – paid advertisement – receives 50 percent of all clicks and first three top ranked web pages garner 60 percent of all clicks.

Once you have decided to go for search engine optimization, you next step is to figure out for which search engine you should work on optimizing your site. After all there are so many search engines out there!

If you look at the latest statistics available for the month of November, 2005 compiled by Nielsen/NetRatings it, probably, won't be any surprise to you that Google at present has most search market share. There were 5.1 billion searches done in November. Out of 60 search engines monitored, Google had a share of 46.3 percent, Yahoo – 23.4 percent, MSN -11.4 percent, AOL - 6.9 percent, Ask Jeeves with its other affiliations MyWay, Teoma, Iwon and search sites of Excite Network has a combined share of around 6 percent, etc. This clearly shows that Google is the undisputed leader among search engines at this moment. That's why in your quest of getting more traffic to your site, you have to emphasize on Google. Other key indicators which favor Google as well are:

• Google is most favored by business people - 82.9 percent of all business users make their queries through Google.

• The Google users are more educated. They are more likely to have a college degree.

• The Google users are from higher income group.

As mentioned earlier search engine optimization is a set of actions that you have to take surrounding your web pages. Here are the key steps of the process:

Select keywords for search engine ranking

1. Make a list of keywords that you think buyers might use to search for products and services you sell.

2. Use a Thesaurus to check synonyms of the words and phrases that you have chosen. You may come up with additional keywords.

3. Eliminate all single words from the list!

4. Go to several of your competitors' websites and check out what keywords they are focusing on by viewing the HTML source of the pages.

5. Now go to Yahoo! pay per click search marketing site Overture, which has an excellent keyword selection tool. Google also has a similar tool located at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox.

6. Get the search phrases or terms that are popular enough and fall into your criteria from above mentioned lists.

7. Check where you stand with these keywords or key phrases in main search engines. Find the needed tool for this here. http://www.marketleap.com/verify/default.htm

8. Now try to find whether you should use your keyword in singular or plural, or which one of the two similar search terms or phrases are more desirable by going to the following page: http://www.onfocus.com/googlesmack/down.asp Remember, studies show that conversion rate for plural words are in general higher than singular!

9. Now that you have a number of keywords, cluster two to three of them for one single page. Remember, every page of your site should be built surrounding one single theme and focused on maximum two to three keywords.

Optimize the pages for keywords

Place keywords in Title tag, Meta description, Alt tags, Heading tags, Comment tags.

Create content

Now develop informative content using these keywords. Use your key words in headlines and alt tag of the pictures. Make sure that you don't over do it! If you stuff keywords more than necessary for a normal text, search engine can ban your site for keywords spamming. Here is a tool for checking density of keywords on a page. Maximum preferable density is 3-5 percent.

Submit to search tools

Effective promotion of a website starts with submission of the site to various search tools available on the Internet. There are two different types of search tools – search engines and directories. Search engines index their listings based on the information retrieved by their spiders which crawl through the hyper links constantly looking for new websites. The directory listings are compiled by human editors from the URLs submitted to the directory. If your website is listed in the directories you can be sure that the spiders of different search engines sooner or later will index your site. That's why you should start submitting your website to the directories. The major directories are GMOZ, Yahoo!, LookSmart, etc.

Link popularity

The quantity of links in different websites pointing to your sites is called link popularity of your website. The more popular is your site the more links you get from other websites and vice versa.

Link popularity is one of the key factors that search engines consider in their search algorithm while indexing a website. What would be the rank of a website in a search result depends on its link popularity in a very big way. Work on getting as many backward links as possible, preferably from the web pages with higher page ranking than yours.

Track ranking

Search engine optimization requires constant monitoring and updating. Don't forget that the competitors are working relentlessly on achieving high positions. The search algorithms are also constantly changing and improving. That's why every now and then you should check out how your site is doing.

Track traffic

If your work started to bring good results and you are getting more traffic, but the visitors are not taking expected actions, this means, you probably have selected wrong keywords. Start all over again with keywords analysis.

Search Engine Optimization is the process of optimizing web pages for natural or organic – as they are also called – searches. Once you are certain that you have done everything possible to achieve maximum results in this sphere, you should consider pay per click marketing with Google, Yahoo and MSN. Effective web promotion requires a combination of both of these two search engine marketing strategies.

Nowshade Kabir is the CEO of Rusbiz.com, a global B2B Portal, which helps companies build web store, buy and sell products and services using eMarketplace, eCatalog and other features. Rusbiz also offers website development packages: http://www.rusbiz.com/design_package.html

[tags]search engine ranking, optimizing web pages for keywords, SEO steps, SEO, google, google user[/tags]

Google Take The Guess Work Out Of Keyword Selection

If your familiar with Google Labs then you should know of two search tools the white coat technicians at Googleplex have been developing. Google Select and Google Trends. Both these search tools analyze keyword popularity in there own unique way. For instance with Google Select as you type your search term in the box Google will offer suggestions along with how many web pages they have in the index for that search term. For example type in the word Immigration and you will see all the other popular search terms used after the word immigration. You can now better select which keywords will work on your site.

With Google Trends (and a warning it can get addictive) you can compare lots of different keywords against each other. For instance type the word Earthquake into the search box and Google Trends will show how popular that keyword was over a time period. It accurately pin points when earthquakes struck most noticeably the big one at the end of 2004.

Now type in Earthquake, Hurricane - you can now see a comparison of these search terms, its a great way of finding out when things occurred in history. Try typing Olympics etc.. Why is it an important tool for keyword selection? Well its pretty obvious isn't it? volume of searches = popular keyword

Neil Holmes is the CEO of WebIntellect, Australia. His personal blog at http://www.neilholmes.com named Site-Search-Software features articles on SEO and Web Marketing.

[tags]Google Labs, Google Trends, Google Select, SEO, Keyword Selection[/tags]

The Myth Of Rankings - Beyond Search Engine Optimization

What follows is a condensed version of a conversation that happens all too frequently when I am approached by a prospect interested in search engine optimization (SEO):

Prospect: We need our website optimized, because we aren't showing up for any searches.
Me: What searches have you tried?
Prospect: We don't show up for ANYTHING.
Me: Why do you want to show up in searches?
Prospect: Well, it seems like we should. Our competitors do, and our website is WAY better than theirs.
Me: But, really, what would you stand to gain from showing up prominently in search engine results?
Prospect: Well, we could get more people who are looking for our products or services to find out about us.
Me: So, what you are saying is that increasing your search engine results could help you to increase sales and awareness?
Prospect: Yes.
Me: Now we're on the right track. Since your goals are to increase sales and awareness, have you thought about not only improving your search engine rankings, but also getting more people to take an action on your site that leads to a sale, getting more people to read your press releases or whitepapers so that they can consistently associate your company with your offering, or sending your prospects a regular newsletter to reinforce your name and expertise?
Prospect: Didn't you hear me? Our website is great. We just don't show up for searches.

And so it goes.

A consistent problem with the "ranking-centric" mindset demonstrated above is that it doesn't reflect a powerful rationale for getting involved in SEO. Where is the true business case? What tangible results are desired? In general, if a prospect can't explain what he or she hopes to achieve beyond "higher rankings" or "more traffic," we'll first try to educate, and, if that person can't move beyond these base subjects, we'll kindly refer them elsewhere.

More and more frequently, people are getting into SEO for the wrong reasons (and sometimes for no real reason at all). Achieving high rankings for targeted keyphrases, while an admirable and worthwhile goal, is really only a small piece of the entire online marketing puzzle. In this article, we'll discuss a few additional, but equally vital, pieces.

Website Conversion

Website conversion is the art and science of getting more of the people who come to your website to take the action that you want them to take – fill out your contact form, read your whitepapers, sign up for your newsletter, or (in the case of e-commerce) buy something. For a company that is trying to build offline business, this action is typically something that gets prospects into the sales pipeline through some form of online registration. For a company or organization that is trying to build awareness, this action can be a number of things – getting visitors to a certain page of the site, getting them to stay longer at the site, or getting them to tell a friend about the site.

The critical point that is commonly overlooked in a ranking-centric mindset is that no number of high search engine positions will address the real problem if your website is not serving as an effective marketing and sales tool. And, as I have said many times before, the overall net effect of raising your conversion rate from one to two percent is the same net effect as doubling your traffic, and it is almost always easier. Increasing the number of visitors to a site that does not convert them effectively is like pumping high performance gasoline into a car with engine trouble – it might help the car to run a little bit better, but if you'd done repairs before adding the premium fuel, it really would have hummed.

Online PR

Your website is only one potential online destination where people can find out about your company, and a typical user will regard your site as an advertisement since you have complete control over the content. With optimized press releases and expert articles, however, you can have your company name mentioned on popular news sites and industry portals, where credibility is more inherent. Optimized Press Releases

Press releases that are optimized to appear when certain terms are typed into news search engines are an excellent way to build name recognition and credibility. If someone is taking the time to look for news related to your industry, he or she is probably either in your business, learning about your market, or writing a piece about your industry. The last category is especially significant since a recent study* indicates that 98% of journalists go online daily, 92% use the Internet for article research, and 73% use it to find press releases. Whatever motivation a person has when he or she searches for news related to your industry, you want your company represented in the results. Expert Articles

Another great way to promote your expertise and business is to write expert articles and submit them to the leading online publications in your field. At least one person in your company is almost certainly an expert in your field – why not let everyone know that? A person that reads an expert article published on an industry portal, and who subsequently clicks through to the website (from the link in the expert's bio) is extremely targeted and already has a favorable impression of your company. Moreover, the same study cited above found that 76% of journalists go online to seek news sources or experts. When your company has demonstrated that you have experts on staff by publishing articles in credible, non-biased forums, the phone invariably starts to ring. Your experts will be asked to provide their opinions, quotes, or experiences for feature articles, often in prestigious industry publications. The benefits of this, of course, do not need explanation.

A side benefit to both of the strategies above is that they increase the number of inbound links to your website and, therefore, can help greatly enhance your search engine rankings – which might be the primary reason you looked into SEO in the first place.

Newsletters

Direct mail was once considered a marketer's dream – but email newsletters can be much more effective. Imagine a direct mail list with a low delivery cost, where every single person on the list has shown an interest in receiving such mailings. Such is the nature of opt-in email newsletters. People have shown enough interest in your company, or, at least, in what your company has to say, to invite you to communicate with them on a regular basis. They are essentially giving you permission to keep yourself "first in mind" whenever they are considering your products or services. Such opportunities are rare in the marketing world. By combining the conversion principles you have applied to your website to your email newsletters, you can also get people to take an action that puts them into your sales pipeline without worrying about getting them to your website itself.

Conclusion

These are only a few of the additional ways to expand an online initiative beyond a misdirected ranking-centric approach. Weblogs (or blogs) are often considered another new frontier in online marketing, and we haven't even touched on paid media opportunities such as banner ads or pay-per-click marketing. However, the three components mentioned above are important elements of a complete and successful online marketing initiative. An SEO campaign launched without considering them is like driving a four-cylinder car with only one cylinder firing – it will move, but you'd definitely reach your destination more quickly – and more smoothly – with all four.

*Middleberg-Ross Survey and Pew Internet and American Life Project

Scott Buresh is managing partner of Medium Blue Search Engine Marketing. His articles have appeared in numerous publications, including ZDNet, WebProNews, MarketingProfs, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, SEO Today, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. He was also a contributor to the recently released Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004).

Medium Blue is an Atlanta search engine optimization company with local and national clients, including Georgia Pacific, DuPont, and Boston Scientific.

[tags]seo, marketing, search engine optimization, Internet marketing, conversion, public relations[/tags]