SEO Tips & Tweaks – Some Timeless Ranking Factors and Some Outdated Ones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

Do It Yourself SEO: 7 Easy Steps

SEO doesn’t have to be expensive, yet day in and day out, small companies pay agencies thousands of dollars in hopes of getting better rankings. Here’s the thing about agencies, though: the turnover rate is high, the pay is low, and passion for your industry isn’t always there. Half the time, you’re paying for a new hire to re-learn your product and industry, while the other half, you’re not able to get a hold of your account manager.

Do It Yourself SEO

Even in industries and companies where you wear many hats, it’s possible to tackle SEO. “Do it yourself SEO” means that you can move at your own pace — no worrying about agencies going over budget because they spent too many hours researching a blog post, and no wondering why someone else took your company name on the newest social networking site.

“I don’t have time for ‘Do it yourself SEO’”

That’s OK! There’s a few reputable services out there that will outline exactly what needs to be done, from linkbuilding to content generation, and will alert you of the next steps to take. You’ll get an SEO checklist of sorts that will lead you to Page 1 rankings for targeted and high converting keywords. Even if you absolutely don’t have time to one or two things from the checklist each week, you can find someone to outsource these tasks to — check sites like craigslist.org for freelancers that will work for lower costs than agencies and that are readily available for outsourced work.

What kind of program will allow me to partake in “Do it yourself SEO?”

There’s a few, but the one I stand by is LotusJump. For under $24 a month, Lotus Jump will tell you EXACTLY what needs to be done in order to achieve Page 1 rankings for the keywords of your choice. Here’s the thing, though — anyone can tell you “Build backlinks” or “Create content - content is king!”, but how do you know your building the right backlinks or creating the right content? LotusJump tells you exactly what you need to be doing - the sites you should be building links on and from, the content you should create and which sites to distribute it to, the directories you should be checking out, and the links that your competitors are grabbing. You’ll get alerts whenever one of these tasks should be done. No guess work needed.

Not sold on Do It Yourself SEO Programs yet? Take this challenge and try these tasks on your own. It’s a bit of work, yes, but once you start seeing results, it’s worth it. The hard part about this challenge, when SEO isn’t your main source of income and your company is, is finding the correct outlets - the backlinks, the content sites, the social sites. That’s why a tool that TELLS you what to do is nice, but I dare you to do this yourself.


Step 1: Social Profiles

Create 1-2 profiles on social media sites on a weekly basis. Find sites in your niche, as well as sites that have a high PR and can bring in quality traffic. Build html backlinks from those sites back to your web site. (Weekly)

Step 2: Q&A

Monitor Q&A sites like Yahoo Answers and WikiAnswers for questions relevant to your industry. Respond to those questions as a way to establish yourself as an authority in your niche and to build links and traffic to your web site. (Daily)

Step 3: Social Bookmarking

After you’ve created quality content on your site, bookmark the content on high traffic and relevant social bookmarking sites. Social bookmarking should be done with every post you believe is of the highest quality, and really, shouldn’t all your content be high quality? (Per Post)

Step 4: Buzz

Monitor the keywords you’ve selected to target and respond every time those keywords are mentioned in blog posts, forums, twitter status updates, or articles on the web. (Daily)

Step 5: Content Generation

Write how-to and informative articles and post them on high PageRank and highly trafficked sites. In the resource box, link back to your web site. (Weekly)

Step 6: Competitive Backlink

Monitor your competition and the backlinks they are building. Every time you get an alert (or manually check) that a new backlink is created, try to procure a backlink from that web site to your site. (Weekly)

Step 7: Directory Submission

Find relevant directories that you can submit your web site to. (Weekly)

Completing the above tasks is easy — that’s “Do it yourself SEO.”

The hard part is finding the sources - where is the newest social network you should belong to and do you have a few hours each week to research them? What kind of tool do you use to monitor different Q&A sites, or do you manually check each site each day, trying to find a mention of your keyword? How do you know when your competitor gets a new backlink? Who alerts you when a new directory is available for you to submit to?

Do it yourself SEO isn’t difficult, but the research part can take a bit of time. If you’re still ready to give “do it yourself seo” a try, check out .

The Way to the Top Search Engine

It is no real secret that a well written topical blog can significantly help out your website - so why aren't you doing it? and how to a better search engine optimization in your site.

The most common reasons I hear for not starting a blog involve a lack of time to write posts, and limited ideas to write about, but taking that extra time to get some useful content out there can do wonders for your search rankings among other things.

An established blog that is updated regularly gets spidered by Google often, and increases the chances of new search rankings considerably. I have seen multiple situations where regularly updated blogs wind up ranking #1 in Google for relevant phrases literally within a couple hours of posting. It usually takes a well established website and blog to make this happen, but there is big potential if you do things the right way.

While blogs work best if updated multiple times per week, even those with a new post every week or two have advantages. Blogs don't have to be a major undertaking, spending only an hour or so a week on posting can have you seeing results in no time.

There are many advantages to adding a blog to your website. Here are a few.

Increased Rankings
By boosting your topical content, you increase the value and relevance of your site. The more new stuff you add, the more of an authority you make your site, and this helps to improve your overall search rankings. It can also help you obtain rankings for "long tailed search phrases".

Long tailed search phrases are those that are less commonly searched, and usually exceed 3 or 4 words in length - they are also very targeted to your product or service. Blogs are great for getting rankings on long tailed search phrases. If you see a long tailed search phrase you want to rank for, use the phrase as the post title (if it makes sense to do so) and write a good, content rich post about it and your ranking potential for this phrase will rise.

By writing blog posts with your target phrases in mind, you can often help improve your overall rankings by increasing the relevance of the site to that search phrase. Consider also linking to other relevant pages within your site from the post.

Increased Traffic
Blogs are great for increasing internet traffic. Aside from the added traffic you may see from search ranking improvements, if your blog is interesting and topical, you will get some repeat visitors to your site as readers check back for new posts. If people really like your blog, they will spread the word, resulting in even more visitors. Just think, have you ever emailed or instant messaged a friend with a link to an article you have read? Don't you want your link to be the one passed around?

Credibility
By blogging regularly about your industry you will help to establish yourself as an expert. Many of your potential customers will see your blog and notice that you know what you're talking about and be more likely to utilize your services. By sharing your knowledge it can help to instill trust onto your visitors which can actually result in increased conversions. There are a lot of faceless, anonymous websites out there - an active blog can help people relate to you and trust you.

Links
A good, well written blog can result in free one way links to your site. Sometimes it is as simple as a fan adding your link to their blog roll, and other times it may be RSS working its magic. Try to squeeze in a link or two into your posts and direct them to other internal pages on your website. If anyone then republishes or syndicates your posts on their sites, you will also end up with a relevant back link. A blog is not a magic bullet used to skyrocket your inbound link counts, but it can certainly help.

What Platform To Use
I am a firm believer in the power of WordPress and the seemingly unlimited plug-ins available to help you. That said, just about any blog platform will work. It is probably best to stick with the main stream providers as they tend to have more options available and better support forums in case you get stuck with customization issues. In the end however, any search friendly blog platform will ultimately do the trick.

Blog Post Ideas
If after reading this you are sitting there thinking, "What should I write about?" here are some ideas to help you get going:

->New product launches
->Press releases
->Industry relevant news
->How to's related to your product or service
->Answers to reader comments
->Posts revolving around relevant long tailed phrases
->In depth product descriptions or tutorials
->Company history or interesting stories
->Reviews of related products, services or online tools

Blogs are relevant for pretty much all industries, and they don't have to take a lot of your time. A little creativity can help you come up with ideas for posts, just try to think outside the proverbial box.

If you've been putting off the blogging idea for some time, consider getting started now. There is much to gain and very little to lose.


Author of tyhis article is Alina Farace a freelance writer and website designer. I have written many articles on web site design and managed hosting for top internet marketing services web sites. I have also given suggestions and tips for cheap web hosting and internet business.

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.

Integrating SEO with SEM

Search engine optimization (SEO) and social media optimization (SMO) are two different techniques with a common aim. While SEO methods have been popular almost since the advent of Internet, SMO is relatively new. With more innovations happening in both levels, many experts now argue that SEO can be integrated in SMO.

The whole concept of SEO focuses on optimizing the Web site for search engines. This is important considering the role search engines play for driving traffic to a Web site. In fact, a Web site’s PageRank is now accepted as a criterion to decide the popularity of the Web site. Customers are likely to get attracted to a Web site that shows up on top of the search engine page result (SERP). They assume that only successful Web sites (read businesses) can achieve the top rank from popular search engines such as Google.

With so much of relevance for search engine optimization, Web sites have explored different ways to improve PageRank. Popular methods include keyword optimization, link exchange, social bookmarking, and pay-per-click advertising. With the evolution of social networking solutions, some of these SEO techniques are now merged with SEM techniques. Typical example is exchange of links through mass email, blogs and forums enabled through social communities such as MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

Social media optimization though focuses greatly on communicating with individual community members using popular communication methods such as email, instant messenger (IM), Skype, Twitter, etc. Unlike the SEO methods, there is a personal involvement in these communications. For example, a micro-blogging application Twitter enables a Web site owner to regularly send Tweets (small messages in the form of text, image, video, Podcast, and links) to customers on a regular basis. There are provisions to customize the message by displaying the logo and theme of the brand.

Twitter is the latest example that shows how SEO can be integrated with SMO. Twitter allows Web sites to share their contents through RSS or direct links to a large community managed by highly popular Web site Twitter. Other Web sites offering such micro-blogging services are Jaiku, Pownce, Tumblr, and MySay. Micro-blogging is now integrated with popular social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Orkut. These are the best-rated Web sites among the trillions of Web sites launched in the World Wide Web. This would mean that any Web site that gains traffic through these sites will get a share of their popularity.

More such innovations are expected in the coming years. Any technology that facilitates smart and fast communication is the need of the day.

Shilpi is an SEO consultant and currently associated as Internet Marketing Manager with IDS Logic, an offshore outsourcing company and web design agency providing SEO services India and web based solutions to global clients.

Don't Destroy Your Search Engine Advertising with Bad Website Design

Don't Destroy Your Search Engine Advertising with Bad Website Design
Ask About This Article 02nd March 2009Author: Paul Marshall
Views: 21

So, you've embarked on a search engine advertising program, maybe even SEO. Whether you're doing this on your own or using an SEO firm, there are key points to become aware of.

If you miss these, you won't increase conversions.

What good is a Number 1 organic search engine raking or AdWords ad listing, if you don't have increased sales or if you don't generate more sales leads?

Too often, we get all focused about the Internet advertising -- the ads, the offer -- that we don't think the whole process through step-by-step and consider the experience our website visitors will be having.

If we did, we'd be thinking "big picture" and we would head off some of these potential problems before they occur.


Overcoming Your Website Visitors Anxiety


When people come to our website it's natural for them to feel anxiety. After all, look at all the cr*p on the Internet today, all the too-good-to-be-true products and services.

But when you and I offer REAL products or services, we have to overcome that concern, even if we're treating our site visitors fairly and not making outrageous claims.

So, how can you overcome these anxieties?


1. Offer more than a 1-page website. Credible companies have multi-page websites, including Privacy Policy, Terms of Use | Service and About Us pages.

They also have more than 1 page about their products or services.

I'm surprised by the number of 1-page websites I see from companies using infomercials to advertise their products. Often, they have the purchase form right on their home page, their only page.

Websites that are only 1-page don't seem credible. And having the purchase form right on the home page comes across as very pushy!


2. Next to any sign up or contact form buttons clearly state that you don't sell your customers' private information and link to your Privacy Policy page.


3. Effectively communicate what your Value Proposition is, also called your Unique Selling Proposition. If you don't know why someone should buy your product or service versus your competitors', now is the time to figure it out. (And by the way, based on my experience, if you don't know this, you're not alone, by any means.)

But our websites have to be about more than just us. They have to be about our visitors. What's in it for THEM, to do business with us? What unique voids in the marketplace can we fill?


As a Small Business Owner, Personally Relate to Your Site Visitors and Communicate Directly with Them


People don't buy from websites, they buy from people! So, how can you apply this to your own website?


1. For many small businesses and solo proprietorships, their website text should speak to your visitors directly in first person.

This should be written from the voice of the owner or President. They shouldn't use third person, institutional-sounding language, getting rid of "we" and "our", using "I" instead, speaking first person, in an actual conversation. Don't try to sound like you're Microsoft!

And while your at it, be careful about overuse of words about you...whether "I", or those words, "we", "our" or "us".

Check out the WeWe calculator (Google: wewe calculator). Make sure to focus on customer-focused words and NOT on words about you or your company.


2. Include your picture on your Web pages.

For a larger small business trying to make that personal connection with their website visitors, try the idea used by the nutritional supplement company Lumina. (Google: Lumina Health Contact Us)

In this execution, notice how Lumina gets you to relate to their customer service department. I still remember it was John I spoke with and that's been over 1 year ago that I called them!

Again, people buy from other people, not from websites.

For us as small businesses, why should we sound large, pretending to be something we aren't? And why should we run from our advantage of being small: low overhead, friendly, personal service and accountability, among other advantages.


Make Each Step in Your Marketing a Smooth Handoff from One Step to Another


If you're running pay per click advertising, make sure your ad matches the experience your website visitor will have when they come to your landing page. Actually, this same principle applies whether you're using search engine advertising or organic search engine optimization.

Quite often when I'm Coaching my small business owner clients or performing the service of an SEO Firm, I find the wording for their organic listing or AdWords ad says one thing and their landing page says something that doesn't sound the same.

This causes confusion is the best case scenario. In the worst case, it causes a lack of trust. Dangerous!

We should understand our products or services. And we know what we want our visitors to do on our site.

Our potential customers may not understand either. We need to think like them, when we explain what we have to offer them and how to use our website to take advantage of what we have to offer.

And when "shifting" from one page to another, we need to hand-off from one page to another naturally and smoothly, like a car with a smooth automatic transmission.

Don't advertise one offer in AdWords, only to have your landing page sound like it was written for another advertising offer. I see this problem a lot!

Often times, having an affordable SEO firm reviewing what you're doing can offer easy, inexpensive fixes that can yield big improvements in your search engine advertising conversions.


Your Action Plan


Let's review what we've talked about.

First, overcome visitors anxieties by offering a multi-page website which answers questions about your company and your services or products, while inspiring confidence in your company. Effectively communicate your Value Proposition.

Second, personally relate to your site visitors. Avoid using the wrong words that may put off your site visitors. Use your picture on your Web pages.

Third, hand-off from one page on your website and one step in your selling process to another smoothly and naturally. We should understand what we want our site visitors to do, but they won't unless we make the process really clear.

Whether your using an SEO Firm or doing the work yourself, if you take these steps, your search engine advertising plan will convert at a MUCH higher rate, when you take these steps.

Are you tweaking your
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