SEO Tips & Tweaks – Some Timeless Ranking Factors and Some Outdated Ones

The search engine optimization industry has been one of the most dynamic ones. It always keeps web masters and website owners on their toes as they strive to get their websites on the top of search engine results.

Search engines like Google frequently change their algorithms of which, some of which they announce and some of which are left for us to guess. Either ways, we have to keep up out optimization efforts in order to preserve the rankings and make it score higher. However, in spite of the changes and updates, there are several practices that remain consistent throughout i.e. they are as relevant in today's time as they were in the past.

Here are some timeless SEO tips and tweaks that would help you improve your website ranking in search results.

Title Tags

Search engines place increased importance on the title tags of web pages. In fact, the title tags are one of the most important SEO elements of a web page. Good title tags are defined by their effective summarization of the web page in relevant words. All the pages of your website should have a unique and keyword rich title tags. These tags not only inform the search engines about the page contents but also appear in the search results and tell users about the contents.

Anchor Text

The visible text of the link is called the Anchor Text. One of the most important SEO ranking factor is the number of inbound links and the text that is used to connect the link hold increased importance. This is because the text that is used for the links also get indexed by the search engine crawlers and affects your rankings. For example if you sell T-shirts online and there is an external link that says 'Find Customized T-shirts Here' it would be a whole deal better to link the words 'customized T-shirts' than 'here'. This is the same case with your internal linking as well. Therefore, try and use descriptive 'keyword-rich' text for your links while linking to your own web pages.

Quantity of Inbound Links

With links, what is more important than the number of links is the number of unique domains they are coming from. If you have 100 inbound links coming from 50 different domains, it is actually better than having 1000 links coming from 5 domains. It is all about how dispersed and extended your link architecture is rather than how dense it is.

Social Media

Social media is a very powerful media to establish your presence and extend your business on the web. Social media websites like Facebook and Twitter offer enormous opportunities to plagiarize your content and increase your linking on the web. They can act as efficient traffic generating sources if used correctly.

Just as there are these basic SEO tweaks, there are also certain practices that have become outdated and don't work anymore. Here are some of them.

H1 Tags

They were a rage in the past because they informed the search engine crawlers about the increased importance of the particular text just because of the increased size. What happened was a little bit of CSS was used to specify H1 tags just anywhere and everywhere. However, at present H1 tags don't have all that importance.

Keyword Density

This was an important SEO consideration sometime back until people started stuffing keywords in the text to get a high density. As of now, there is no important placed on them. Rather, what is important is having good and highly valuable content.

Kabir Bedi works as a senior web consultant at LeXolution IT Services, a reputed web development company based in India, that specializes in providing a full range of web design services, website maintenance services and search engine optimization services. He has over 10 years of experience in the web industry.

Robots.txt to Keep Those Crawlers at Bay

The world of the internet is a crazy mix of various tools, technologies and terminologies that can have you winding up in circles with the apparent complexities involved. Much of that obviously happens to hover over the arena of website marketing or promotion in which lots of tools and strategies are at play. The act of making your website more visible for the audience denotes its quantitatively improved appearance on search engines. The more number of times your website is reflected on search engines when people search for relevant services or products, the more traffic you can generate. This is possible through a process known as search engine optimization or SEO in short. A search engine optimization firm analyses the potential that is underlying your website and prepares a strategy for its promotion. For this purpose, a web promotion firm engages in activities like keyword research, article submissions, link building and directory submissions. With a lot of such firms prevalent today, you can avail really affordable search engine optimization services.
In the midst of this entire process, a web promotion specialist may face certain obstacles in the way. One such obstacle is variably known as robots or crawlers or spiders, which can visit your websites regularly to scan the contents and make an impression out of it. Now, this can be both advantageous or disadvantageous for you with the latter being a common scenario since you would not be updating your website content everyday and the robots can lower the search frequency after some time. To avoid this, a program known as robots.txt or robots exclusion protocol has been developed to prevent the accessibility of your website by the robots. So, the next time you seek out an affordable web promotion service, be sure that you specifically ask for the inclusion of this program by the SEO specialists for your website. The lesser the hassles you face in your web promotion process, the more chances you have of success.

The Importance Of A Good Internal Link Structure In SEO

There are 3 reasons why you should spend time on the internal link structure of your site. It ensures that the spiders can find all your pages and index them. It builds the relevance between a page and a keyword. And as a site owner you can determine the PR value of your pages.

Indexing of your website

Ensure that all your pages, or at least those that are important to you, can easily be found by the spiders. This seems logical but if they are not found, you can not expect that one day your site ranks in the top 10. Miracles happen... but not in the SEO world.

1) More pages means a larger site, allowing you to be seen as an "authority", at least if you have something useful to say. For more details go to: www.the20seotools.com.More pages means you can build links between pages. These will get stronger and finally you will build more PR. And the more pages, the more keywords / phrases / long tail keywords you can target and the more pages you will see pop up in the results.

Building relevance between keywords and pages

Before you begin with your internal link strategy you must know for what keyword you want to rank a certain page in the search engines. Your main page will always have your main keywords and your internal pages can concentrate on less competitive keywords or long tails.

The key here is a good anchor text ... If you want to refer to a page that is about the "opening of a shop" and that is the key phrase you want to be found in Google, then use those keywords in the text that lets you link to that given page. Don't link with a text like "in a previous article".

Also try to link from relevant pages that have something to do or might be connected with the opening of a shop. That way you get relevant pages linking to each other.

The green bar

2) About this (too) much-discussed green poison, I will only mention that you should not be mislead by it however it is still very important for good results. The principle is very simple, the more pages you have, the more PageRank you can get and the more you can divide or send PageRank to important pages in your site. For can visit to: www.offline-promotion.com.There's a big difference if your site contains only 50 pages of which 10 have PR, or you have a site with 500 pages of which 300 are green.

Finally, I would say, create a good balance between your external link building campaigns and your internal link structure. Create a clear plan of keywords / phrases that you want high scores for in the search engines and try to give the feeder pages good external links.

Do you have any kind of web presence? Do you have a website or a blog? Do you have a Squidoo lens? Or a HubPage?

Then you have something to tell people, right? Perhaps you have something to sell and you want as many people as possible to find your site.



www.seo-prediction.com
www.huge-niche-keywords.com

SEO some Tips To Boost Your Home Business

SEO refers to the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines via natural or organic search results. Whether your website gets very little or massive amount of traffic depends a great deal on how much effort you have put in to optimize your website for SEO. In this article, I will describe some SEO on-page optimization factors in which you can very quickly make on your site to improve your search engine ranking. This will give you a boost to your home business ideas you promote in your website and start to make money now.

Keywords Meta Tag

It would do you good if you keep your keywords and phrases not exceedingly long, perhaps not more than a dozen. A mistake some marketers make is putting popular keywords here but why would people want to do that. Would you put a popular keyword like diet if you are promoting home business ideas? The tip here is to use keywords that are actually found in your website content. In reality, a lot of search engines ignore keywords meta tag and some marketers remove this tag completely and focus just on the content page. for more details visit to www.offline-promotion.com. But there is really no harm putting them, as there are many search engines which still index this tag. You also do not know when search engines change their strategies.

Write Unique Content

You’ve heard of the saying “Content is King”. If you consistently write good content and update it regularly, chances are, you will have more people visiting your site and looking at your interesting home business ideas. If you own a blog, always write not only unique content but update it regularly too.

Using Keywords In The Headline

Document title is what users see at the top of the browser. It is very important to put most of your main keywords in here. It would also help to remove any prepositions like “and” and substitute them with a “|” key. I would also go as far as to say, besides the content of the document such as your article, the title is the second most important factor which determines your SEO ranking.

Using Keyword Phrases

Don’t focus on single keyword but rather keyword phrases. There are five million pages on the web that contain the word “cat”, so a search for just that term produces meaningless results. If your page is actually about cat care, then that’s the keyword phrase you want to have on your home business ideas page. Similarly, make money and make money now produce very different results too.

Make Use of alt image tags

Include an image tag on every image or graphic and put your relevant keywords there. An example would be “weight loss picture graphic” or “safe weight loss image” using both words of graphic or image so that search engines do not view them as spam.

Add header tags (h1 and h2)

Add one header tag (h1) and place our most important keyword there. The header tag should be as far towards the top of your home business ideas homepage. When Google reads a webpage, it views the text from the top left hand side of the page to the bottom right hand side of the page. So, it‘s best to place your (h1) header tag on the top left hand or top/middle portion of your page. You can think of an (h1) header tag as a title for whatever content you have on your page. Similarly put your secondary keywords in h2 header.

Page Optimization Is A Skill

When a user enters terms into a search engine, the engine starts to scan the web looking for those words. If the engine finds the words on a page, it will count how many times the words appear and also determine whether the words appear in conjunction or on their own. For more information logon to www.keyword-swipe.com .If the words are grouped together, it’s more likely that the page is a good result. So, how can you associate your page with certain keywords? It’s simple really. Put them on your page. Put the keywords in the title element, the headings, the file name, and the text of the home business ideas homepage.

Keywords In Domain Name

A website with keywords in the domain name often ranked higher. So if you have not chosen your domain name, you have a great opportunity now to take advantage of this well known secret.

SEO is the process of optimizing a website as to obtain a high rank in search engine results pages. Search engine positioning and increased traffic essentially comes down to 3 basic elements. Keyword and keyword phrase selection, search engine friendly SEO, and good off-page SEO which includes your backlink management and strategy. Additionally, writing and posting articles, press releases and even videos can substantially help SEO placement and ultimately making money now for your home business ideas.
www.thesearchengineprimer.com
www.search-engine-premiere.com

Surefire Search Engine Optimization Link Building Tips - Internal And External

I have been working as a SEO Expert in the search engine optimization field in Phoenix Arizona for over 12 years, and unfortunately I am still learning. SEO consultants can teach you about a lot of things when it comes to the search engine optimization marketing of your website. However, one of the most important things that they are going to teach you about is linking. There are 2 forms of linking, Internal linking within your website and external linking; which is the process of obtaining links from other websites.

If you have never worried about the marketing of your website online, then you may not know how important linking is. Sure, it helps to get the name of your website out there, because the more links to your website, the better. SEO experts will teach you that linking is used also for a totally different reason. They will obtain links to your web site for the purpose of improving search rankings in popular search engines. Internet crawlers are the bots that crawl the web for search engines to find updated information on the internet. Then they report back to the search engines and use an algorithm to determine where you belong on the internet search rankings. The more quality links you obtain to your site, the higher you should rank. The better spot you get in the search engines, the more traffic you will obtain.

This is how it works; As search engines move around the internet, they come across tons of sites. When the search engines come across websites that link to your site, then it's like you get a thumbs up towards improving your search rankings. As you can guess, the more points you get, the higher your ranking; and thus, this is what a lot of SEO experts build off of. SEO consultants usually use their services to better work on your web site as well as teach you how to improve your site on your own. They will teach you how to obtain quality from popular sites. Because there are a lot of tips and tricks to make it easier and more effective. Link building is what makes search engine optimization so hard!

The truth of the matter is, you can not just throw your link out there anywhere and expect it to count towards your site. In fact, a lot of search engine crawlers look to make sure that the websites have something in common and that they are credible links and referring sites. For example, let's say that your site is about cars, and you place a link on a flowers website. This is not going to help as much for your website rankings. If you do this sort of thing a lot, it can actually hurt your site. Many SEO experts are masters at getting links to your site that work for you. Their services are aimed at simplifying your online marketing with their professional services. SEO consultants can help teach you about the basics of search engine optimization, and how you can use it to get ahead.

About the Author:
Joel McLaughlin
DataFlurry offers Affordable Search Engine Optimization marketing. We are a talented Phoenix Internet Marketing, Search Advertising Online Agency. Marketing Services Services.


Joel McLaughlin found Dataflurry cheap web hosting services in 2001 under the name JDM Design; since then Dataflurry has grown. Joel looks forward to providing some of the best Cheap Hosting, Web Design, Internet Development and Search Engine Optimization. Looking for Cheap Web Site Hosting Services, look no further than DataFlurry Cheap Website Hosting for Small Business & Ecommerce web sites. We also offer SEO Search Engine Optimization Marketing Services.
http://www.dataflurry.com/web-hosting/cheap-website-hosting-services.html

What it Takes to be a Leader in the SEO Field ?

There are many different emerging careers that have sprung up with the growth of the Internet as a legitimate way to do business, but perhaps none of them is as important to continued development of these new industries as a Website SEO Services provider.

In effect, a Professional SEO Company is to ebusiness what the ad man was to the business that existed before things went to cyberspace. So now that the Professional SEO Company has made itself known as a real player, there are a set of guidelines that any SEO Company in San Diego should follow to make sure that they're perceived as both professional and knowledgeable.

SEO Marketing Tasks

First off, there are several things that you should be well versed in if you plan on making a go of your Web Promotion Company in California. If you clients allow you to take over all of their SEO marketing tasks entirely, you should have someone on your staff or at least have access to someone who is a professional writer.

The results will speak for themselves when you convince your clients that fresh SEO copy is the way that they'll get the keyword rankings that they need, and to do that working with someone with a journalism background is essential. As the owner of the Professional SEO Company, you'll also want to understand the importance of knowing how to install and maintain a custom Wordpress blog on you client's site(s). When you become proficient with this feature, you'll be able promote your Website SEO services with confidence knowing that these Wordpress custom blogs are responsible for driving traffic to the sites and keyword rankings up.

Links to Homepages

There are always concepts that you'll need to stay on top of if you plan on driving traffic to your customer's sites and establishing yourself as a Professional SEO Company. One way link baiting is a relatively new idea where an SEO optimized article is distributed all over the Internet in the hopes that readers will follow the links provided back to the intended homepage. Another method that the entrepreneur who wants to build up their Web Promotion Company in California can use is video to build their customers links up.



Crest Media is one of the leaders in search engine optimization Los Angeles . Our tested expertise and innovative design techniques will boost your web marketing and e-commerce business. Your search for a professional SEO firm and web design company San Diego will over at http://www.crestmediainc.com

Why Search Engine Optimization Is A Must For Online Success

Many calls for articles are requested with the express description asking that a specific keyword or words be used for search engine optimization. If you are not familiar with the term, the definition according to Wikipedia is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via natural search results for targeted keywords.So do you know what it means now?

The search engine optimization request means that the word or words supplied by the requestor are to be used as many times as possible within an article while still sounding natural. The object is to generate the most traffic from search engines on the internet. When the word is used within a 500 word article a total of approximately 6 or 8 times without making the article sound too keyword stuffed, the chances of someone finding this article when they search the keyword is pretty good.

For the web owner who contracts for articles with keywords associated with their product or service, a search of that particular keyword will take you to their website. This is used to generate web traffic to their site in the hopes that they will purchase something. For instance, a website that sells hair care products may use hair or hair care as a keyword. When someone is interested in looking at anything that is remotely connected to hair they type in the keyword. The results are displayed and if your site made it to the first page of the search engines, chances are they will go to your website.

If visitors find something they like, they will buy a product from your site. If this happens several times a day you are generating traffic that will make your website more popular. The more hits or times that someone goes to your site, the higher in the rankings that are monitored by search engines like Yahoo and Google, your site will go. The goal is to be in the top spot of course, but number two to eight is a good spot as well.

This is the reason that many people who own websites post articles on their site. Using the keywords that will generate the traffic to their site is extremely important if you want your site to be recognized out of the millions that are starting to swamp the internet. The site can be several pages or one page and the articles that are used on the site are all linked back to the search engines. Search engine optimization has been the number one way for a site to gain recognition.

The first providers of content started the optimization for search engines in the 1990s. Then, it was a fairly simple process. The page was submitted, the search engines would basically send spiders to the page to dissect it. All the words and position in the article were searched and all the information was stored in the search engine.

The whole process of search engine optimization was so simple when it first started. Today, it requires specialized knowledge and serious effort. The search engine algorithms are changing everyday and there are billions of websites on the Internet to compete.

If done properly.... over a period of time, "search engine optimization" is well worth the effort because of the targeted visitors you get.



Ranju Kumar editor of 1webpromotion.com has a great experience in the field of internet marketing and Search engine optimization. If you'd like a team of EXPERTS to Search Engine Optimize your website AND promote it all over the Internet, go to http://1WebPromotion.com to find out how you can leverage other people's effort and time to your success.

Directories Submissions And SEO

This article will guide you the importance of directories submissions in launching a new site, or ranking an existing one. I am going to review 6 important areas.

Directories are the “brand new site” best friend.


Since every new domain gets put in the Google “TrustBox”, since they favor links from trusted sites. This is a part of the "TrustRank" equation within the algorithm. Directories play a very important roll in getting good quality inbound links that help your site to get out. As they pass PageRank and reputation with Google, your site will greatly benefit from its inclusion in these directories, especially in the launching phase of its life cycle. So, finding solid directories to get your site listed is the key.

The viable alternative to link buying... and safer.

Directories provide one-way inbound links to your site, and drive traffic to your site through direct referrals. By doing this, they boost your link popularity and ultimately improve your search rankings. All this done naturally, and cost free in many cases.

Paid vs. free : the differences and the similarities.

Paid directories quickly list your site, were free ones may take several weeks or even months to review it. On the other hand, some paid directories charge expensive listing fees for the link they provide, and that is not cost effective. If you work on a limited budget for your site, you may want to submit to a handful of paid directories but a few hundred of free ones. Of these last ones, prioritize “one-ways” preferably. Whatever directories you submit to, paid or free or a combination of both types, the quality of the directory itself should be the biggest consideration in your decision.

The directory page that counts is where the link is.

When doing a directory submission, not only look at the PageRank of the homepage, but also of the subpage, where your link will be. While it may seem like a benefit to have your site listed on a PR7 directory, this is less effective when you realize that the internal page where your link is actually only a PR3, when you expected more.

Pagerank is not the only factor of directory quality.

A low PR directory is not necessarily a bad one. New directories fall in this category. These directories do review and list sites quicker. Also, when they become more popular, so will your listing. Again, base your decision based on the quality of the directory. And keep in mind whether or not the directory is search engine friendly. When checking the structure of the link to your site, make sure it is not dynamic.

Directories links shouldn’t be more than 10%.

You shouldn’t have more than this percentage in your overall inbound links count. Don’t rely on directories alone as your link source. Diversify them for your benefit.
Please refer to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Basics – Part 2 for more sources.

Article By: Bhatt Bijoy




For more useful information, tips and hints please browse at website:- www.the20seotools.com www.seo.reprintarticlesite.com

SEO FOR ALL

So you have a web site, great isn’t it as you sit back and look at your own little bit of world on the internet. It's been up and running some time now, but you have a problem, you aren’t getting many hits and you want to know what you can do about it. Course there are programmes you can buy to get your website higher in the search engines, but have you seen the cost of those things? They can cost £200 plus. Not something that most of us want to splash out on, when all we wanted to do was share a little bit of a hobby with the world, or sell a few items for pocket money. Spending hundreds of pounds seems to be over kill when more than likely the website itself didn’t cost that much in the first place.
So is there an answer.. well yes there is and it doesn’t cost you a penny. all it takes is a little time and a little insight to how the search engines work.
I openly admit that I’m no expert, what i have learned i have done so through hard work and a lot of sifting through the jargon that can be found out there to help us. Annoyingly though, most are trying to sell you something so your not sure what to believe, if what they are saying is all hype trying to sell you their answer. I’m not trying to sell you anything here,im just sharing with you what i know, in the hope that you too will get the traffic you desire to your website.
So, enough waffle, lets get down to the facts.

1) Did you know that the name of your website url is very important. to get the search engines to rank you high, you must have your keyword in the title. Lets give an example here of what i mean. Let’s take a website that sells new age gifts, let’s call it www.spiritcharms.co.uk nice name, and seems to convey the essence of the products. trouble is the name doesn’t tell you what they are or sell. A new age gift shop should have the words new age gift shop in the url title. if it doesn’t then the search engines mark that against you. A good example of good naming is
a website store that sells Gothic item, call it www.thegothicstore.co.uk and you are laughing, the search engines love that. so it is very important to choose your name carefully. it is worth it to change your url if it isn’t going that well, they are very cheap now. Co.uk only costs around £5 for two years if you shop around. Think carefully about your Url does it say what you are or do???

2) Content content content... now this is something else that is important. the search engines love what they call "RICH CONTENT". So what does that mean? well simply put, lots and lots of meaningful text for the search spiders to get their teeth into. Don’t just stick a few lines on your front page and fill it up with pictures,video,flash content. The search engines cant read that content and don’t like it too much. also change the content often, at least twice a week. The search engines seem to know when you have changed something and come to have a look, which of course is good for your indexing.

Don’t forget to include your keywords in your rich text content, but be very careful not to over do it. The densities of your Keywords are very important, too much and you will get penalized, leave a keyword out of your content and you will get penalized for that too.

3) Links, now links are a biggy when it comes to your rankings. some say this is the most important factor of them all when it comes to the search engine ranking you in a good position. Not just any old links though. The best links are those that relate to what your own website is about. So if you sell grass seed, then good links would have grass seed in the title of the website you are linking to. Failing that then the next best thing is websites that are closely related grass seed. Garden supplies, lawnmowers ect.

Don’t just link to anybody and everybody, the search engines do penalize you if your links are scattered about all over the place, stay away from link farms, and shady or banned sites too.

4) Speaking of content, did you know that the search engines rank you for the simplistic text; they rank you higher the less education you need to read it. Yep that’s right. If you have lots of big word on your site that you need a degree to understand because you think it makes your site look good, then think again. simple is best...

Now there are a few tips for you to be getting on with and don’t cost you a penny to implement....

Good luck

Stephen



I am a webmaster of two sites. www.spiritcharms.co.uk and www.thegothicstore.co.uk. i have owned a few websites over the years and have learned that the biggest stumbling block for most people is the search engines and how they rank you. most people dont want to splash out hundreds on SEO utilities, me included, so i have become dedicated to make it simple for ordinary folk like you and me, to understand the basics of SEO, and try to teach people the basics.
http://www.spiritcharms.co.uk

Article contribution in SEO Services

There are several articles written these days on different type of websites and most of them look in the way that these are written primarily for the search engines. One can easily identify these articles because they are stuffed with lot of keywords and do not contain much useful terms.

Writing articles for search engines is not a bad thing but it should also from users point of view. Many websites may have ranked better in search engines due to such kind of SEO work and now the technology is catching up very fast and the reader and user are given due preference and it is not based on the fashion just nor repeat the keywords.

While providing SEO Services all the professionals and content writers must write with some common objective in mind like providing the accurate information, getting higher rank and better linking with other sites.

These days article writing and submission to different article directories has also proved powerful aspect in providing SEO Services and it also enhance a website visibility on the internet.The article seems lost in case the website does not provide the useful information. In case the visitors do not find interesting article, they will ignore it soon click out of the page.

Similarly distribution of the article which is not written well can not be appreciated and linked to by other websites. Thus in order to be able to attract good visitors to the website and its pages, the published article must be relevant and simple and well written. The article should be useful to the audience and informational. There should be no repetition of keywords and use of variation of key phrase. The article should be targeted to target audience and help the reader with its information.

Rajeev Guglani writes articles for SEO.He has vast exposure in writing for Web Promotions.He is working for NDDW. For Website Promotion ,Internet Marketing   SEO Services India  visit  www.nddw.com

Search Engine Optimization Factors

Like anything, SEO is a tool that has it's place in the grand scheme of things, sometimes you need a hammer, other times you need a screwdriver. So, essentially knowing how and when to employ SEO, can be more pertinent than that the defining motive of why.

In order to keep the reading time brief, we will use a problem / solution summary to expedite the quandary and then move on to the next component.
Site Structure 2008 or 1998?

The Problem - WYSIWYG Editors If you created your site using a program that for lack of better terms does all the work for you, like Microsoft Front Page, Dreamweaver, or other types of WYSIWYG editors (what you see is what you get), chances are there is an abundance of code that is preventing user agents from crawling your pages.

If spiders cannot reach the content and are pressed by rampant renegade CSS, more often than naught they will simply move on to the next site and omit your chances of ranking since your pages fail to qualify (as a result of clunky code).

The Solution: If you really have content that is worthy of sharing, hire a developer or spend some time studying to build a search engine friendly/compatible XHTML,.Asp, or PHP site using an optimized content management system. WordPress works just fine for blogging and you can easily customize it by recreating an XHTML template version of your site that is W3C compliant (in other words squeaky clean with bells on it) to flag the spiders that you are ready to play ball.

This reluctance to relinquish the past with the "I built the site myself at Angel Fire / mentality" is what prevents a vast yet silent majority of websites from achieving their top 10 aspirations.

This becomes painfully apparent when you see examples of crusty content from 2 years ago cluttering up the pages, cobwebs on their ftp program or lack of fresh content whatsoever. Add a stint of questionable code with a poorly optimized site structure and your page is just asking for the boot.

Not to say that you can't use a WYSIWYG editor and still achieve high rankings (after removing the bloated in-line elements) such as tables or outdated HTML formatting, but let's just say that the internet is EVOLVING and it you do not, then those methods you clung to could be anchors dragging you down in the search engine result pages.

Up next...

Content, is your Content Cutting-Edge? or Dull as a Butter Knife?

If you are a business seeking to make an impact with your marketing message, what good is traffic if it does not convert? Granted, not all businesses are streamlined enough to shine in the spotlight online, but why just have a placeholder (as a website) when it could essentially replace all of your combined forms of advertising at a mere fraction of the cost per sale vs. print, radio, or television advertising?

The Problem - When asked about content creation, most small business owners reply by stating "they don't have anything to write about or they do not have the time to invest in developing new content for their website/brand".

The Solution simply hire someone who does. If you are that pressed for time or are quite frankly stumped to devise content that can serve as a bridge between you and your potential prospects, then pay attention to intrinsic opportunities, share your white papers, describe something about your industry in detail, parlay press from exciting trends, products or services that you can integrate from perusing RSS feed from news sources, Ezines and the like.

All of these things serve to provide your visitors with a satisfying reason to frequent your website or your blog again and again.

It is all about value, if your pages lack it, then your just another bump on the road until they click the back button or browser to find one of your competitors that does offer what your pages lack.

Strangers have no loyalty to your pages, unless you can convince them otherwise, this also applies to search engines as well. Search engine spiders are a tough lot to sell, they have been there, done that, seen that already and the uniqueness of your content is what they reward (by way of relevant highly qualified traffic that they can funnel to your pages) if you appease them.

Realistically there is a distinct formula for creating top 10 rankings, not that SEO's devised it that way, but rather the search engine engineers did by creating quality guidelines as the gatekeepers of the top 10.

For example, we know as a result of trial and error that search engines like;

* Fresh well written content
* Organized Site Architecture
* Traffic & Link Popularity

If you are not prepared to facilitate the 3 basic fundamentals of optimization outlined above, then save yourself the money on organic SEO, it simply may not be your cup of tea. Public relations and custom content creation may very well be more along the lines of a notable strategy to jump-start your internet marketing campaign.

In closing, What is SEO? Search engine optimization, much like a finely tuned piece of machinery, works best when pristine fundamentals are intact. SEO in a nutshell is a synchronized collaboration of themed on-page content, frequent engagement from search engine spiders, impeccable keyword selection to integrate relevance and a healthy portion of off-page link popularity to balance to the equation. So there you have it, the search engine algorithm simplified.



Jeffrey L. Smith is an seasoned search engine optimization expert and founder of SEO Design Solutions SEO Consulting Company. Jeffrey has been involved in internet marketing since 1995 and brings fresh optimization methods and Search Engine Promotion Services to businesses seeking organic search engine placement.

What is Anchor Text and how it can help your rank

One of the most prevailing and talked about issues on the web today is getting traffic to your website. The reasons: more traffic will generate income, more traffic gets your advice and opinions heard and to be contactable. Regardless of your reason to run your own site and the results of running your own site, virtually all website owners want to be on the first page of the search engine. The feeling makes you feel important and satisfied that your e-work has paid off.
To help achieve these most sort after positions in search engines without having to spend any money is actually quite easy. You will hear the phrase SEO mentioned all the time throughout the web as a way to help achieve the somewhat elusive front page, number one positions. You will also hear that as part of your SEO (there are 2 parts) you need to generate links to your site. Apart from reciprocal linking and paying for links you can in fact do it all yourself.

The best way to get links for your specific keywords is by using Anchor Texts. Some people refer to them an Anchor Links. Whenever I peruse article directories, which I do daily, I read so many articles where that author might just include a URL link. Often, after reading the submission guidelines, I notice that authors can include anchor links and haven't done so and is ultimately a waste of an opportunity.

To place anchor text in your article is a really simple process. Once you have located your keyword you need to place the following code before the keyword -a href="www.yourdomain.com"- replacing yourdomain with the name of your website and putting < before the 'a' at the beginning of the code and > at the end. Then you place the code after your keyword. The end result should read -a href="www.yourdomain.com">xxxxx- and when formatted will read as it should as per the examples below.

The believed outcome is as followed. Search engines like anchor texts as the words are made prominent to a search engine. Therefore, when a surfer types in the keywords that you have anchor text for, the search engine picks up a match between your keywords pointing to your domain and the search words inputted by the surfer. The more anchor texts that you have for the same words searched for the more chance you have of getting on the front page of the search engine. Now the hardest part for many isn't generating the keyword lists it is the publishing of the content that contains the anchor text keywords. Chances are, you will require many of the same anchor text keywords on many sites for it to show results and that many other people will be targeting the same keywords. However, it can be achieved with persistence and a bit of research. Using the term "allinanchor: *keyword*" in Google shows the amount of webpages that use the same keyword that you are targeting.

Please remember, this is just one of a variety of SEO principles and should be used as part of the overall process.




Chris has a work from home business which researches home business scams. He recommends SEO Elite for SEO Software for the internet marketeer.

5 Quality Check Tips from a Professional SEO Company

Ever wondered what a professional SEO Company looks for when beginning a new project on a clients site.

There are a number of high-end quality Search Engine Optimising (SEO) and Marketing firms out there today. Ever wondered what is really involved when a website is put through its SEO maintenance check list. The following is an example of work that is normally carried out by professional SEO Company 360innovate.

ANALYSIS

Firstly, when a customer approaches 360 with a view to having SEO work carried out on their site the initial stage is to analyse the site and see what keywords they already target (if any) and also what on-site work needs to be done on the website (we call this on-page optimisation). It’s a bit like having a health and safety assessment on your premises, we go through the nuts and bolts of your site, the text, images, layout, navigation, structure and usability features to make sure that its been built to a standard that enables your site to rank at its most optimum in the main search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask).

There are at least 200 individual areas we examine and check and it is a very important first stage that gets you started. Thankfully there are a lot of customers out there who have employed good designers who make sure that the initial work is done and that the first stages as described above can be kept to a minimum.

KEYWORD RESEARCH

Keyword research is a very important step used in identifying what people actually type in the search engines to find your product or services.

For example, most of our customers find us using "SEO Company", or "SEO Company UK", but we also get traffic from "Search Engine Optimisation Company Scotland" or "Internet Marketing Company" plus a whole range of other sources.
Another factor to take into consideration is the conversion rate from a particular keyword search. Conversion rates can be determined by how many times it takes a unique visit to your site to actually buy something or even make an enquiry. There may be multiple reasons why your site is not converting from not targeting the correct traffic, bad design or navigation, perhaps your site suffers from a number of negatives that simply put people off from ordering/enquiring due to the lack of trust.

THE COMPETITION

We look at their site, not just once, but every day, we monitor changes, we log them, we work out why they are achieving such good results and we implement a strategy to better them.

KEYWORD DEFINITION

After extensive research into the keywords and phrases used in your industry we agree with you the amount of keywords that you wish us to focus on.This will vary from customer to customer, some customers will only want us to focus on a small amount of keywords for their SEO campaign and some will want us to focus on thousands of keywords, this is also how we define how much time we spend on your site initially and on a ongoing basis and according how much it will cost.

ARTICLE SUBMISSIONS/PRESS RELEASES

We produce articles and on-line press releases related to your business on a monthly basis linked to the keywords we use in your campaign, with links to your site within the content. We then release/publish these documents within trusted on-line sites that the search engines like to visit and read on a regular basis, this in turn links back to your site and gives you favourable search engine listing results, as the search engines see you updating your content on a regular basis.

LINK BUILDING

We will seek to link your site to as many other trusted sites available that are in your industry, for example if you are a retailer, we would link your site to National Retail Federation, or if you were a restaurant, we would link your site to a trusted restaurant review site. Link Building is a fundamental part of any SEO package. Search engines monitor the links pointing to your site. Gathering trusted links to your domain is a natural progression and any website that suddenly accumulates hundreds or thousands of links in a very short time frame will be flagged for underhand tactics and possibly put under review with a ban from the search engines being the favoured outcome. Not a good business strategy.

TIME SCALES

The time taken achieve good page one results differs according to how competitive your industry is, and anyone or company that guarantees you top ten results within a short time-frame be extremely cautious about employing them to carry out SEO work for you. However, If you have an uncompetitive keyword or phrase, then you can normally see results in about 6-12 weeks, if on the other hand you are in a fiercely competitive industry then it can be anywhere between 4-12 months.

ONGOING WORK

Everything spoken about here is not something that we do on one occasion, but is completely and utterly ongoing. It’s best to see SEO or Internet Marketing as a pro-active approach. The guidelines are always changing. What may work well today may not tomorrow. There are other approaches that we have not even touched upon in this article such as viral marketing, blogging, email marketing, podcasts, video marketing and social media marketing. The web is a fluid market, if you stand still then your competitors will pass you by.

Article By Paul Steven.

Search Engine Optimization Tips: Rank High in the Search Engines for Your Keywords

Every internet marketer or webmaster aims to have their websites in the first page of the organic search results for their targeted keywords. In this article, I’m going to reveal some vital search engine optimization tips that will boost your chances of being listed in the Top 10 results for your chosen keywords.

SEO has its advantages. It’s free, unlike pay per click where you have to pay every time someone visits your site, regardless of whether they buy anything or not. Being listed in the organic search results may also attract more visitors to your site than the paid listings; people are not inclined to click on ads and prefer to click on natural search items.

The downside of SEO is that search engines change their algorithms often; but don’t worry. By following the search engine optimization tips below, you’ll stand a much bigger chance of being listed in the Top 10 for your desired keywords and keeping your position for a long time to come.

Keywords must be in the anchor text of incoming links.

A different site linking to you counts as a vote in the eyes of the search engines. And if the anchor text of the incoming links has your keywords in it, then you will have better chances of ranking for those keywords.

Keywords must be within the title tag.

The search engines place great emphasis on the title tag; it tells them what your website’s topic is about. Place your keywords at the start of the title tag for best results. The title tag must not be longer than 60 characters.

Your link should contain your keywords.

Having your keywords in your link will help you get ranked for those keywords. For example, if you want to rank high for the keywords "website copywriting," your link should look like this: http://yoursite.com/website-copywriting.htm.

Play it safe with your keyword density.

There is no specific rule regarding the "right" keyword density, because the search engines change their algorithms often. There have been theories that Google considers a keyword density of more than 2% to be spamming, but Yahoo and MSN are fine with up to 5%.

Different SEO experts have mixed opinions on the ideal keyword density; so don’t focus all your energies on this. Just mention your keywords near the beginning and write naturally. To be on the safe side, aim to have no more than 2%, but space out your keywords from each other so they would look natural in the eyes of the search engines.

Put your keywords in headings (within the H1 tags, H2 tags, etc.)

The search engines place great emphasis on words between headings (H1, H2, etc.) so it would be a smart idea to have your keywords placed within them. Just make sure that the keywords are suitable to the content and you’re not “forcing” them.

Put bold, strong, or italicize tags between your keywords.

The search engines take more notice of words that are either bolded or italicized, so placing your keywords within the bold, strong, or i tags can help you rank higher for those keywords.

Put your keywords near the start of your content.

Although this does not count as much as the search engine optimization tips above, putting your keywords at the beginning of your content (not necessarily html code) is a good SEO strategy because the search engines place great emphasis on the first few parts of your webpage.

Put your keywords in metatags.

Google overlooks metatags, but Yahoo and MSN still read them. So spend a few seconds putting your keywords in metatags to add to your search engine credits.

Put your keywords within alt tags.

The search engines can't read graphics or images, but they can read the text descriptions within the alt tag. If you have images on your site, fill in the alt tag with your keywords, but don't overdo it.

Target specialized keywords.

Some keywords have very high competition that you have lesser chances of ranking for them. If you have a target audience or niche, it might be a good idea to focus on those keywords that are more targeted and have less competition. For example, instead of having a competitive keyword phrase like “jobs bartending,” you can focus on “alabama bartending jobs” if your target audience is in Alabama.

Observe LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing).

Don’t let that technical-sounding phrase put you off. To explain it simply, the search engines look for synonyms or words related to your target keywords to determine the relevancy of your content to your keywords. The search engines place more emphasis on those pages that have words related to the keywords as opposed to pages having only the targeted keywords. For example, if your target keyword is “self-hypnosis,” your webpage would have better search results if you have related words such as “auto-suggestion” and “visualization” rather than having only “self-hypnosis” in your document. For LSI suggestions, use Google Sets at
http://labs.google.com/sets

Observe keyword proximity.

Keyword proximity is the closeness of the keywords to each other. For example, you're optimizing your webpage for the keywords "marketing strategies." If you have "marketing" in the first sentence and "strategies" in the 4th sentence, it still counts but doesn't have as much effect as having "marketing strategies" together without any words in between. Keyword proximity is used for keyword phrases that have 2 or more words.

Never engage in keyword stuffing.

Don’t fill your content with keywords unrelated to your topic. This will have a negative impact on your search results for other targeted keywords. Never stuff your content with keywords deliberately, especially those unrelated to your content. If the search engines see you filling keywords in an unnatural way, you might get banned from the search results.

Hope these search engine optimization tips help you get first page rankings for your chosen keywords. Best of luck to your SEO efforts!

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Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – What is it?

Using Relevant Search Terms

Search Engine Optimisation is a process you employ to ensure top rankings in the search engines for the most relevant search terms on a website. When somebody is looking for a particular topic on the web they type in a relevant phrase. These phrases are the most relevant search terms. SEO processes target these search terms and high ranking will be sought for these search terms.

The first stage of the SEO process is to choose the relevant search terms for your website and put preferable one term per relevant page, but two per page is ok. Splitting large pages means you can make two pages and use a different search term on each page. Matching the search terms to the content of the page is very important.

Structuring the links within the site.

It is important that search engine spiders can find the all of your sites pages. The aim is to get your pages put in the search engines index. Indexing improves the chances of higher rating. Below are some things to remember to improve the chance of search engine spiders finding your pages.



Do not use links created by Javascript, spiders cannot read them.
When using Session ID's in URL's, check the rules about their use particularly if you are looking for Google ranking.
Make sure all pages link to at least one other pages.
Structure the internal links (page links) so that your targeted search terms are reinforced. This means making sure that the pages with sub topics of a topic link to the topic page using the correct link text.


Off page elements - Link Text This element is one of two important points for good rankings. You can put link text on pages within your site or on the pages of other sites. Here’s the point, the main search term on the target pages should be included in the link text. Where possible, use different link text for every link that links to a page, but always include the target page's main search term in the link text.

On page elements The aim here is to make sure that all page elements link to the target search terms on each page. Consider the following:

The Title Tag This is the second of the two important elements for good ranking. Ensure the page’s search term is contained in this tag. Put it near to the front as possible. Make sure it reads well. Remember each page’s title tag should be different to that for other pages. The Description Tag Write an attractive description tag for each page and include the search terms in it at least twice. Make sure the search term is mentioned at the beginning if possible. The H Tag (Header Tag) H tags have numbers from 1-6 with 1 being the biggest heading size. H tags carry more weight when read by the search engines. So include the H tag as near the top of the page as possible and include search terms in the tag at least once if not more on the page. Text Using the search terms in the text on the page as much as possible is important. Put the terms early on in the page and as much throughout the page as possible without losing the readability of the content. Search terms put in bold text carries extra weight but not as much as H tags. If a word from the search term words is found in the text but is separate from the other search term words. It can only help. ALT Text Make sure you put the search terms in the alt text of all images on the page.

So in summary, the key to effective search engine optimization is to initially choose relevant search terms. Then ensure you have search terms correctly placed in strategic elements of your website construction. These elements being at the point of link construction, in off-page elements and on-page elements. It is important to note that while search engine optimization is very effective it does not happen overnight. Be prepared to be meticulous in your implementation of SEO and patient in reaping the rewards.


Michiel Van Kets provides articles for Dave Glynn, who owns Searchenginesensation.com. They are part of Atomic Web Solutions and offer professional search engine optimisation (optimization) and web marketing services including pay-per-click campaign setup and management.

Search Engine Optimisation Basics

Search engine optimization is a technique of increasing the visibility of the website and hence generating more traffic to the website. A search engine lists websites based on the keywords searched and after considering various other parameters. Designing a website that satisfies those parameters is what search engine optimisation is all about. Search engine optimization, also known as SEO, gained particular significance after organisations started using to get their websites listed at top positions on various website. The logic is simple that higher the rank of the website on the search engine, the more it will be noticeable and hence more number of visitors to the website. The visitors were considered to be potential customers and organisations started using search engines as marketing tools with search engine optimisation being a major contributor in this area.

The search operation of the search engines is usually based on some algorithmic calculations. Search engines use special type of programs to find pages and create a database for their search results. Such programs are usually called web crawlers or spiders and indexers, which pull out links to other pages, picks up relevant words from the page and their occurrence, and the structure. Once the website and its pages are registered in the search engine’s repository, the site is said to be indexed. Depending on how effectively search engine optimisation is done, the listing on the search engines of the website is decided.

Search engine optimisation primarily begins with studying the business and the keywords that will be used for optimisation. Keywords are some specific words that are relevant to the theme/business of the website and which the users would probably use in their searches. There are other factors that contribute to search engine optimisation. These include structure of the website, content of the website, designing tool used, keywords used, link building, and so on.

*The coding and structure of the website has to be such that the required tags (Title, META, and Heading) must be properly placed in the code. Also all the necessary keywords should be included in these tags.

*Sometimes, depending on the tool used for designing the website, some amount of unnecessary code gets added in the page. This might mislead the web crawlers and hinder the optimisation process.

*Using adequate amount of website content with appropriately placed relevant keywords is also an important factor in search engine optimisation. However, make sure that keywords are not unnecessarily stuffed, as this might work negatively for the website.

Search engine optimisation may be effective in getting some return on investment. However, the results and listings of the search engines may keep changing for various reasons and hence SEO needs to be strategically implemented.

Google Tells You How To Get Top Search Engine Rankings

Did you know that the Google search engine actually tells you how to get a top search engine ranking? Everyone thinks it's a mysterious secret. However, it actually isn't all that mysterious at all. In fact, if you do a search for "Google Webmaster Guidelines" they explain what they look for when they add a web site to their search index and rank a web site in the search listings. By following the suggestions that Google provides, you can achieve top search engine rankings for keywords related to your target market without having to resort to tricks to manipulate search engine rankings.

First off, understand that the last thing you want to do is use tricks to manipulate search engine rankings. Also known as "black hat techniques" these tricks will do nothing more than make Google mad at you and get your web site eliminated from the search engines completely.

Remember, the purpose of Google is to provide relevant content to the end user, who is the person who is performing the search at a given point and time. What you want to do is to help Google facilitate that process, not try to fight against Google by creating a bunch of junk just to try to manipulate the search engine rankings.

You can do a search as I suggested above and read what Google wants yourself, however, I will highlight a few things that will help you in your search for top search engine rankings on the Google Search Engine.

The best way to get listed in the search engines is to create a very content rich web site. One of the factors that Google uses to determine search engine position is a concept called page rank. This concept describes the way that Google ranks each web page based on a variety of factors. One factor that determines page rank is the content on your web page. One of the things that Google LOVES is a web site that has lots and lots of content. Therefore, if you want to get ranked high in the search engines, a great way to do that is to create a web page that has a large amount of content.

One of the best ways to get Google to rank your web site high is to have relevant web sites link to your web site. If there are web sites that have content similar to the content that you have on your web site and those web sites link to your web site, then you significantly increase the chances of your web site getting a higher ranking in the search engine. It's even better if the relevant web site already has high placement in Google's search engine.

Another suggestion that Google makes is to get your web site submitted to relevant directories. This is also an excellent way to increase your search engine rankings for your web site. One area that is overlooked is niche related directories. By submitting your web site to directories that are related to the niche your web site covers, Google looks favorably upon your web site and will give you a higher search engine placement as a result.

In short, take some time out and look to see exactly what it is that Google is looking for. Then go ahead and give Google what they want. There's an old saying "If you help enough people get what they want, you can have what you want." This saying also applies to Google. Help Google get what they want (which is quality content in their search engine) and you can have whatever you want (which is a high search engine ranking in Google).

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SEO - Insider Tips To Creating SEO Keywords And Phrases

If you have been practicing search engine optimization you probably already know that it is a good idea to include quotes in your keywords and keywords phrases to make your web copy more attractive to the search engines. You probably also know that is a good idea to put things that your site specifically sells in quotes so that the search engine spiders see you as having exclusive or specialized content or information. However there are a few more tips that come along with creating SEO keywords and phrases that are less well known.

Many SEO experts advise practicing word stemming. This means that when you do find a keyword that works that you should not hesitate to use it in the words different forms. For example take the phrase “SEO optimization”. You might also want to use phrases such as SEO optimizing, SEO optimized and SEO optimizers which branch out linguistically from your original keyword.

Another big tip is to avoid using what are called kill terms. This is just a phrase for conjunctions and prepositions that are largely ignored by the search engines. Common kill terms include a, an and, at, by, for, in, it, of, the too, to, web and with.

Yet another tip is to be aware of case sensitive keywords. When in doubt you should always submit them in lower case. However when it comes to names and places you might also want to put things in their proper cases. For instance if you are searching for Frank Kern you will want to put in Frank Kern as well as frank kern. Some experts even advise putting in a keyword all in caps as in FRANK KERN as many individuals have stuck capital key caps when they search. The search engine that is thought to be most sensitive to case is Alta Vista.

Chris Angus is a SEO and website promoter, he can be contacted at sales(at)brilliantseo.com

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About the Author:

Chris Angus is a SEO and website promoter, he can be contacted at sales(at)brilliantseo.com New Baby Gift
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An SEO Glossary - Common SEO Terms Defined

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become an essential weapon in the arsenal of every online business. Unfortunately, for most business owners and marketing managers (and even many webmasters), it's also somewhat of an enigma. This is partly due to the fact that it's such a new and rapidly changing field, and partly due to the fact that SEO practitioners tend to speak in a language all of their own which, without translation, is virtually impenetrable to the layperson. This glossary seeks to remedy that situation, explaining specialist SEO terms in plain English...

AdWords

See ‘Sponsored Links’.

algorithm

A complex mathematical formula used by search engines to assess the relevance and importance of websites and rank them accordingly in their search results. These algorithms are kept tightly under wraps as they are the key to the objectivity of search engines (i.e. the algorithm ensures relevant results, and relevant results bring more users, which in turn brings more advertising revenue).

article PR

The submitting of free reprint articles to many article submission sites and article distribution lists in order to increase your website's search engine ranking and Google PageRank. (In this sense, the "PR" stands for PageRank.) Like traditional public relations, article PR also conveys a sense of authority because your articles are widely published. And because you're proving your expertise and freely dispensing knowledge, your readers will trust you and will be more likely to remain loyal to you. (In this sense, the "PR" stands for Public Relations.)

article distribution lists

User groups (e.g. Yahoo, MSN, Google, Smartgroups, and Topica groups) which accept email submissions of articles in text format, and then distribute these articles via email to all of the members of the group. See also 'article PR'.

article submission sites

Websites which act as repositories of free reprint articles. Authors visit these sites to submit their articles free of charge, and webmasters visit to find articles to use on their websites free of charge. Article submission sites generate revenue by selling advertising space on their websites. See also 'article PR'.

backlink

A text link to your website from another website. See also ‘link’.

copy

The words used on your website.

copywriter

A professional writer who specializes in the writing of advertising copy (compelling, engaging words promoting a particular product or service). See also ‘SEO copywriter’ and ‘web copywriter’.

crawl

Google finds pages on the World Wide Web and records their details in its index by sending out ‘spiders’ or ‘robots’. These spiders make their way from page to page and site to site by following text links. To a spider, a text link is like a door.

domain name

The virtual address of your website (normally in the form www.yourbusinessname.com). This is what people will type when they want to visit your site. It is also what you will use as the address in any text links back to your site.

ezine

An electronic magazine. Most publishers of ezines are desperate for content and gladly publish well written, helpful articles and give you full credit as author, including a link to your website.

Flash

A technology used to create animated web pages (and page elements).

free reprint article

An article written by you and made freely available to other webmasters to publish on their websites. See also 'article PR'.

Google

The search engine with the greatest coverage of the World Wide Web, and which is responsible for most search engine-referred traffic. Of approximately 11.5 billion pages on the World Wide Web, it is estimated that Google has indexed around 8.8 billion. This is one reason why it takes so long to increase your ranking!

Google AdWords

See ‘Sponsored Links’.

Google PageRank

How Google scores a website’s importance. It gives all sites a mark out of 10. By downloading the Google Toolbar (from http://toolbar.google.com), you can view the PR of any site you visit.

Google Toolbar

A free tool you can download. It becomes part of your browser toolbar. It’s most useful features are it’s PageRank display (which allows you to view the PR of any site you visit) and it’s AutoFill function (when you’re filling out an online form, you can click AutoFill, and it enters all the standard information automatically, including Name, Address, Zip code/Postcode, Phone Number, Email Address, Business Name, Credit Card Number (password protected), etc.) Once you’ve downloaded and installed the toolbar, you may need to set up how you’d like it to look and work by clicking Options (setup is very easy). NOTE: Google does record some information (mostly regarding sites visited).

HTML

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the coding language used to create much of the information on the World Wide Web. Web browsers read the HTML code and display the page that code describes.

Internet

An interconnected network of computers around the world.

JavaScript

A programming language used to create dynamic website pages (e.g. interactivity).

keyword

A word which your customers search for and which you use frequently on your site in order to be relevant to those searches. This use known as targeting a keyword. Most websites actually target ‘keyword phrases’ because single keywords are too generic and it is very difficult to rank highly for them.

keyword density

A measure of the frequency of your keyword in relation to the total wordcount of the page. So if your page has 200 words, and your keyword phrase appears 10 times, its density is 5%.

keyword phrase

A phrase which your customers search for and which you use frequently on your site in order to be relevant to those searches.

link

A word or image on a web page which the reader can click to visit another page. There are normally visual cues to indicate to the reader that the word or image is a link.

link path

Using text links to connect a series of page (i.e. page 1 connects to page 2, page 2 connects to page 3, page 3 connects to page 4, and so on). Search engine ‘spiders’ and ‘robots’ use text links to jump from page to page as they gather information about it, so it’s a good idea to allow them traverse your entire site via text links. (See ‘Link paths’ on p.21. for further information.)

link partner

A webmaster who is willing to put a link to your website on their website. Quite often link partners engage in reciprocal linking.

link popularity

The number of links to your website. Link popularity is the single most important factor in a high search engine ranking. Webmasters use a number of methods to increase their site's link popularity including article PR, link exchange (link partners / reciprocal linking), link buying, and link directories.

link text

The part of a text link that is visible to the reader. When generating links to your own site, they are most effective (in terms of ranking) if they include your keyword.

meta tag

A short note within the header of the HTML of your web page which describes some aspect of that page. These meta tags are read by the search engines and used to help assess the relevance of a site to a particular search.

natural search results

The ‘real’ search results. The results that most users are looking for and which take up most of the window. For most searches, the search engine displays a long list of links to sites with content which is related to the word you searched for. These results are ranked according to how relevant and important they are.

organic search results

See ‘natural search results’.

PPC (Pay-Per-Click advertising)

See ‘Sponsored Links’.

PageRank

See ‘Google PageRank’.

rank

Your position in the search results that display when someone searches for a particular word at a search engine.

reciprocal link

A mutual agreement between two webmasters to exchange links (i.e. they both add a link to the other’s website on their own website). Most search engines (certainly Google) are sophisticated enough to detect reciprocal linking and they don’t view it very favorably because it is clearly a manufactured method of generating links. Websites with reciprocal links risk being penalized.

robot

See ‘Spider’.

robots.txt file

A file which is used to inform the search engine spider which pages on a site should not be indexed. This file sits in your site’s root directory on the web server. (Alternatively, you can do a similar thing by placing tags in the header section of your HTML for search engine robots/spiders to read. See ‘Optimizing your web ’ on p.22. for more information.)

Sandbox

Many SEO experts believe that Google ‘sandboxes’ new websites. Whenever it detects a new website, it withholds its rightful ranking for a period while it determines whether your site is a genuine, credible, long term site. It does this to discourage the creation of SPAM websites (sites which serve no useful purpose other than to boost the ranking of some other site). Likewise, if Google detects a sudden increase (i.e. many hundreds or thousands) in the number of links back to your site, it may sandbox them for a period (or in fact penalize you by lowering your ranking or blacklisting your site altogether).

SEO

Search Engine Optimization. The art of making your website relevant and important so that it ranks high in the search results for a particular word.

SEO copywriter

A ‘copywriter’ who is not only proficient at web copy, but also experienced in writing copy which is optimized for search engines (and will therefore help you achieve a better search engine ranking for your website).

search engine

A search engine is an online tool which allows you to search for websites which contain a particular word or phrase. The most well known search engines are Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

site map

A single page which contains a list of text links to every page in the site (and every page contains a text link back to the site map). Think of your site map as being at the center of a spider-web.

SPAM

Generally refers to unwanted and unrequested email sent en-masse to private email addresses. Also used to refer to websites which appear high in search results without having any useful content. The creators of these sites set them up simply to cash in on their high ranking by selling advertising space, links to other sites, or by linking to other sites of their own and thereby increasing the ranking of those sites. The search engines are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and already have very efficient ways to detect SPAM websites and penalize them.

spider

Google finds pages on the World Wide Web and records their details in its index by sending out ‘spiders’ or ‘robots’. These spiders make their way from page to page and site to site by following text links.

Sponsored Links

Paid advertising which displays next to the natural search results. Customers can click on the ad to visit the advertiser’s website. This is how the search engines make their money. Advertisers set their ads up to display whenever someone searches for a word which is related to their product or service. These ads look similar to the natural search results, but are normally labeled “Sponsored Links”, and normally take up a smaller portion of the window. These ads work on a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) basis (i.e. the advertiser only pays when someone clicks on their ad).

submit

You can submit your domain name to the search engines so that their ‘spiders’ or ‘robots’ will crawl your site. You can also submit articles to ‘article submission sites’ in order to have them published on the Internet.

text link

A word on a web page which the reader can click to visit another page. Text links are normally blue and underlined. Text links are what ‘spiders’ or ‘robots’ use to jump from page to page and website to website.

URL

Uniform Resource Locator. The address of a particular page published on the Internet. Normally in the form http://www.yourbusinessname.com/AWebPage.htm.

web copy

See ‘copy’.

web copywriter

A ‘copywriter’ who understands the unique requirements of writing for an online medium.

webmaster

A person responsible for the management of a particular website.

wordcount

The number of words on a particular web page.

World Wide Web (WWW)

The vast array of documents published on the Internet. It is estimated that the World Wide Web now consists of approximately 11.5 billion pages.

About the Author:

* Glenn Murray is a website copywriter, SEO copywriter, and article submission and article PR specialist. He owns article submission service Article PR and copywriting studio Divine Write. He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at glenn@divinewrite.com. Visit http://www.DivineWrite.com or http://www.ArticlePR.com for further details.

SEO - An overview

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process by which the quality and volume of traffic can be improved on a search engine on the Internet. Normally when we search for a particular piece of information or data on any top search engine ranking the results we get, are presented in a serial order by the particular search engine. This presentation of the results is derived from what is called the ‘Algorithmic’ basis and the results that figure at the top of the order are the ones that would be visited more often.

A number of times the process of SEO could focus on searches that broadly range from ‘vertical search’ to ‘horizontal search’ or could be a very specific search. The process of SEO depends to a great extent on how the search engine has been designed to respond to specific searches. A search engine may have a particular set of search words or ‘Keywords’ that has been used by a very large number of visitors to a particular site on this search engine. In this case the designers of the search engine would invariably give a very high priority to this particular set of keywords that would display the website in a privileged position in the top three or top five results on the search engine.

Now, although certain search engines do have somewhat different algorithms that are liable to change sometimes, it has been found that all engines more or less similarly appreciate the information that searchers look for, such as:

Simple, clean and implicit search engine friendly web site design
Carefully prepared, perceptive direction
Descriptive and well-written text
Tag content that that optimizes identification of relevant keywords
Accurate links that extend the scope of the search
It is true that good content that provides relevant information to the visitor to the site utilizing keyword phrases should be the objective of all contents that makes its way to the World Wide Web. Therefore a professional content writer and not SEO, is what is vital for that aspect of the job. In fact most people would rather be presented with information they require in clear, concise language, right on the main page of the site they are visiting.
Normally a decent search engine strategy takes up to a year to work although it might also work with minimal effort for a long time although it might not perform well in the beginning. If the site does not provide the visitors with what they want then it might never perform at all. Therefore while designing a site, it is important to remember that for the site to be up on the World Wide Web it will first be read by search engines that are machines. On the other hand, any content designed specifically for machine-readability could turn off a real visitor who is not interested in how the pages appear to a machine. Hence SEO is basically a question of balance.






About the Author
Raj Andrews is a senior experienced web developer with Apex Global Solutions specializing in California Custom Website design, E-Commerce shoping cart, Content Management System, Web Site Maintenance, Logo Development, Company Brochure Design, California Marketing Agency Branding Firm, Search Engine Optimization, Multimedia Development.