Seo Articles

SEO 101: Should I Put My Business Name in the Title Tag

2008-06-26T17:10:00.000-07:00

he html title tag of a web page's html header is the single most important "on page" element when it comes to search engine optimization. That being said, is the best use of this valuable real estate served by including your business name in the title? Chances are the answer is a resounding "no!"

The title tag is an html tag which occurs in the header of a web page's code. The first thing I look at when I get a call from a prospective client is their title tag. More often than not, this tag is being used improperly, to the extreme detriment of the client.

Recently SEOMOZ.org released its rankings of the ten most important factors in search engine rankings. The title tag came in at number 1, and this is no surprise to any SEO that has been around for awhile. Google especially pays a lot of attention to title tag content, and uses title tag information heavily to ascertain the relevant keyphrases for which to rank a site. The opinion of search engine experts is unanimous on this one - keyphrase use in the title tag is the number one "on page" factor affecting search engine rankings. This is not disputed, theorized or subject to professional debate. It is a fact.

Given this fact, we must look at how to best use the title tag to optimize our site for search engines. Many sites place the business name in the title tag (or even worse yet leave it blank or with default content such as "untitled document" or "home page"). Any of these variations can be disastrous!

Let's use an example of a company that manufactures widgets. The primary keyphrase for that company would be "widgets", this being the phrase for which the company would like to rank highly for in the search engines. Now let's assume the company name is "ACME Manufacturing Company, Ltd.". Notice that the word "widgets", which is the desired keyphrase, is not extant in the company name.

So the company goes out and builds a wonderful web site to promote their widgets. However, throughout the site the title tag contains the following content: "ACME Manufacturing Company, Ltd." What is the effect of this?

First off, the effect of this is that the site will likely rank highly for the search query "ACME Manufacturing Company, Ltd.". The problem is that nobody is searching for the company name, they are searching for widgets. So all of ACME's competition shows up in the search engines for a widget query, but poor ACME is nowhere to be found. How do we help ACME rank highly for the search query "widgets"? We must optimize the title tag for the search engines by replacing the current title tag content with the desired search query: "widgets".

Generally speaking, the company name should never appear in the title tag unless you actually expect to derive most of your traffic from searches involving your company name. As this is a rare situation, avoid the temptation to put your company name in the title tag - save it for elsewhere on your page. Put your desired search keyphrases in the title tag, and leave it at that.

Following this methodology throughout your site by optimizing title tag content for each page according to the desired search query for that page will be a major step in the right direction for high search engine rankings.

About the Author: Matt Foster is the President of ArteWorks SEO, a top 5 search engine optimization company in the world. For more information on search engine optimization, please visit http://www.arteworks.biz.

The Importance of Web Usability in Search Engine Optimization

2008-06-26T17:09:00.000-07:00

Not only are you in competition with the millions of other Web sites owners who sell the same product/service as you, but you are also competing for users' time and attention. While search engine optimization and submission can bring you the traffic you need, only you can ensure that visitors will stay on your site by giving them a reason to want to stay. That is where Web site usability comes in.

What is Web site usability?
The International Standards Organization (ISO) defines Web site usability as the "effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction with which a specified set of users can achieve a specified set of tasks in a particular environment." In simpler terms, usability is how efficiently and effectively users can accomplish what they are trying to do when they visit your Web site.

Now that you have an understanding of usability, we'll explain the basics of what a Web site should include to make the most of the user experience:

Content is key

Let's face it, people visit Web sites for content -- they want information. Sure, it helps if your site is visibly appealing as well. But, without the right content, the results of the user experience can be fatal to your business. They simply won't come back.

Here are a few tips to remember in regards to content:

Always be concise. Research shows that reading from a computer screen is about 25% slower than reading from paper or other print medium. To that end, you will want to edit your writing to say the exact same thing in half the words it would take if you were writing on paper. Also, think back to the last time you came to one of those really long-winded Web sites where the content may have been great, but you still had to scroll and scroll and scroll to get to the end. It can be a nuisance. So, keep your pages short.

Make your content scannable. When people use the Internet, they are looking at mass amounts of information. Help them get to the core of what they want by using bulleted items, short paragraphs, and subheadings to make it easier for them to find what they are looking for.

Write without error. There is no excuse -- absolutely none -- for poor grammar, typographical errors, and misspellings. If you own a computer, you have access to spell-checker and grammar-checker technologies. Use them. These small details will reflect upon your site. If you don't convey professionalism on your own business, how will you be conveyed to potential clients? Can they trust you with theirs? Before uploading any new content, proofread it. Then, turn it over to someone else for their input.

Write as if you were a Public Relations pro. Granted, many of us aren't PR exec's, but you should know how to market your business. Use the lingo that is most appropriate for your business. While you want to provide information, your main goal is still one thing: to sell. So, write to sell.

Maximize your keywords. As part of the search engine optimization process, you went to great lengths to select keywords and phrases that are most appropriate for your business. Be sure to use them whenever possible (without being overtly redundant) in your content.

Refresh, refresh, refresh. Web sites should be updated on a regular basis -- don't let them go stale. Add new products/services, update users with new information and tools, do what you can to change your content and keep users coming back for more.

Know your audience. Since most audiences vary in terms of experience level with both your product/service and their experience level with the internet, you will want to simplify things more than ever. You don't want to talk to yourself - make sure potential clients understand your product/service. The best way to do this is to create content that is informative, yet simple to understand for even the newest of the newbies.
Web site design

Secondary to content is the actual design of your Web site. While the user comes to your site specifically for information, they also will want to enter an area that is simple to use and visually appealing. Here are some usability tips regarding Web site design:

Avoid long load times. While the latest technology for Web sites is incredibly interesting and fun, lots of graphics, Flash images, and audio can create long load times that make the user wait. And, if customers have to wait too long, they may leave -- and never come back. As a guide, users will generally wait for a site to load for ten seconds before vacating.

Make your pages simple to read. A common error in Web usability is the incessant need to create the prettiest Web site that ever existed. We've all seen them - every color from the Crayola box of 64 has made its mark on these pages. And, with a little bit of color usually comes a lot of cute little images that dance across your screen. In all seriousness, resist the urge to do this. Not only will it hoard a lot of memory, but it will drive your users crazy. Black text on a white background is the easiest to read. If you really want a colored background, stick with a lighter shade, but remember to use black text.

Create a well-organized site. Maintaining a consistent look and feel throughout your site is critical. The navigation you use on the home page should be carried out throughout your Web site. Clear navigation can either make or break your site. You are basically providing your users with a road map to your products and services. Don't let them get lost along the way.

Consider your space. Content should amount to 50-80% of your page design, with navigation takey up approximately 20% of the space.

Stay consistent with design elements. Select one or two (maximum) fonts and stick with them throughout your site.

Have a secure and automated server. Amazingly only 20% of current Web sites are secure.

What can you do different? This is probably the most important thing to remember when designing your site. Think about your business and your competition. What are you doing differently that will make users visit your site? Once you find out what that is -- whether you offer the lowest prices, have a special widget that no one else sells, or have reputable customer service -- capitalize on that one thing by incorporating it in your design elements.

There are good sites on the Internet and there are an equal number of bad sites (if not more!) out there. The good sites provide for a smooth user experience - simple navigation and simple-to-find information. The bad sites are slow to load, difficult to navigate and leave the users frustrated before they can even get to the information they initially needed. If you've already invested the time and effort into developing a Web site, you should take a serious look at the usability of your site. Here's an simple homework assignment: Some day, when you've got a few hours to spare, surf the Internet and make note of sites you think are good and which ones drove you absolutely crazy. Investigate the qualities of those sites and what made them good or bad. Pretty soon, you'll start to see some patterns that you can learn from and implement into your own usability strategy. Remember, usability is all about creating a unique and enlightening user experience. Usability is the name of the game -- isn't it time you started playing?

Terry Detty, 42, enjoys all aspects of internet marketing and getting out for a breath of fresh air occasionally.
Internet marketing software makes search engine life easier.
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Importance of Keywords for SEO

2008-06-26T17:07:00.000-07:00

Selecting correct keywords is the best way to reach your site, because the keywords can make or break site future. So selecting correct keywords is an art, so that your visitors can reach on your site directly without any problem. But if your keywords are not according to your potential customerâ€™s desire, or your web site doesnâ€™t have the keyword which they are looking for then they will miss you, which is very bad for the future of your site. You should remember that when you select keyword for your web site, you must use those words which are related to your contents and also popular search words as well. This is called keywords optimization.

A good web page contains information that people are looking for. Keyword search is an art which we have said earlier, for this you have to choose good keyword which are really good and match with your contents, and you must use appropriate tool to select your keywords then you must succeed to select suitable keywords. For example if your site is related to the â€œdog careâ€ then your keywords is related to the â€œbathing of dogsâ€, â€œeating habits of dogsâ€ etc, so that when people search for the â€œbathing of dogsâ€ then your site also show in the result, because when people search on all these types of sites then they use these types of keywords, which is too common and also related to these sites.

How to select keywords: Search engine use the keyword to show the rank pages. If you select the right keywords then it should be good for your site. Keywords search is the building block for the search engine optimization. Search engine use those keywords or phases to display web pages which are relevant to these terms.

If you want to select your keywords then you must spend some time on your company site and concentrate on products and quality then you set your keywords according to your products and your service. The most obvious is the direct description of our product, for example widgets if you are selling blue widget then you must set your keywords like â€œwidgetsâ€ or â€œblue widgetsâ€. If you select your keyword blue widgets then your site must display in the result of the search engine. If you have a product which is stain killer then you set your keywords as â€œstain removerâ€ or â€œstain killerâ€, these types of keywords helps to search your site. If you have web Design Company then you must select any keywords like â€œweb designâ€, â€œweb designingâ€, â€œweb page designâ€, â€œinternet web site designâ€, â€œweb design and developmentâ€, â€œweb site designâ€ and many more, these types of keywords helps a site to make the future of the web site.

Site description statements: one thing keywords are not the only way to promote your website. After the whole analysis you must make a list of 30 keywords, 15 is better. Put them in the order of impotency. Here are five steps to selecting keywords so that you can make the best keyword decision for your SEO strategy.
1. Make a list for selection process: Sit down and think about what your web site is about. What is your product and your preliminary service or what your potential customer thinks about your website? With this process you can make a simple list of keywords for the selection process.
2. Select the alternative of your keywords: Review the list you made in step one and try to come up with alternate keywords that are similar to the ones you listed. For example, if you sell ice cream or cakes bakery products, you could make your list of keywords even more specific by listing the different types of ice cream that you sell. Then your list might be expanded to include chocolate, vanilla, tutti-frutti, dry fruit, mango flavor, banana flavor, and many more. The more specific you can make your keywords, the better your chances of finding keywords that have little competition from other Web sites.
3. Go for some software: Now you just move your side to select the research portion of the keyword selection process. Use some software or web based tool to select more specific keywords for the site.
4. Select Common or popular search word: Review the popularity of each search items on the World Wide Web. This will helps you to select the better keyword and the result of the search engine. Keep one thing in your mind that your keywords are common and which is used by the visitor during any search if your keywords are not searchable then it affect the future of your site.
5. Implement your keywords in your site with the help of the Mata tags, alt-image tags, page title, site maps, and anything else you can use to incorporate the keywords you selected. Keep track of your site statistics so you can see what needs to be changed once you have implemented your keywords.
These are the few tips to research your keywords, because the success of your website may depend on traffic going to your site from search engines.

Keywords Solidity: The true definition of keyword Solidity is the ratio of the word that is being searched for, against the total number of words appearing on a given web page. If your keyword occurs only once or twice in a page of 800 or more words, obviously it has a lower keyword Solidity than a keyword that would occur six or seven times in a page of similar length. For Example: Suppose you have Web Design Company and your web site represents your company world wide, but you have chosen your keyword not according to your contents or nature of your site. You select your keywords regarding PHP, Photoshop, Flash, Animation these words are very rare in the description or a single web page during search your site is stands in the last number of the search engine, because the ratio of the word against the total number of words appearing on the given web page is very less. So these types of ratio destroy the future of your site.

So when you select your keywords you just select those keywords which have solidity on your web page. Solid keywords also help to brighten the future of your site.

So in the end keywords make or break the future of your site. You never select any keyword from anywhere you must be conscious during the selection of the keywords. The future of your site is depending upon the selection of the keywords. If your keywords are solid and also describe your business then it helps to increase the traffic on your site. A big website is not so big if no one finds it. Keep in mind to research your keywords carefully from the Potential consumer's viewpoint and then sit back and watch the traffic roll in!

Alex Roderick

The Author is the owner of a web site design Company, and providing Web Design and Development Solutions to clients across USA and UK for affordable and sensible prices.

The Top 6 Points To Remember When You're Doing Keyword Optimization

2008-06-26T17:05:00.000-07:00

Keywords are words that influence search engines to find your site. This is called search engine optimization. Your keywords have to be placed in your site's HTML source as META tags. Search engine 'robots' will come and search for the keywords your customer types in. If it tallies with your kewords, your site can be found.

However, getting good keywords that give the site more exposure is pretty hard to find. With the right tools, research and application, keywords can save you a lot of time so that you can do other Internet marketing strategies.

These are the Top 6 points you need to remember when you're doing keyword optimization:

- Find your keywords

Get a keyword research tool such as GoodKeywords or WordTracker. These softwares can generate you certain keywords that people type in to search for products similar to yours.

- Single Keywords

Single Keywords do not have that much luck with the search engines, because people want to narrow their research by putting in two or more keywords to go along with it. For example, instead of just setting your site for the word 'health', you can set your site for the words 'health cure osteoporosis'.

- Summarise Your Site

Find keywords that summarise your site. If your site is about Middle Eastern cooking, you can use keywords like 'meditteranean cuisine' and so on.

- Heading

Make sure that the keywords are located at the heading of your website. This is to let your customers know what you're offering to them and giving it to them straight. The heading is also featured in search engines when they're looking for your site, so these keywords in your heading play a small part in helping your site to be found.

- Similarities and Spelling

Search for similarities or double meanings in your keywords that people also type in to search for your product. For example if people are looking for the Portable Playstation, you can also include in the abbreviation PSP.

A lot of people have spelling errors when they type certain keywords online. What you should do is doing some trial and error on certain keywords you feel people normally mis-spell and add it on to your site.

- Placement of Your Keywords

Place your keywords at least 3-4 times in your website. Preferably, one in the introduction, two in the body copy and the last one is in the conclusion of the site. The reason on why you do is is because search engines love it when your site has repetitive keywords, confirming the relevancy of your site with that keyword phrase. Do not repeat them too much, though because it can make your content seem unprofessional.

Overall, these search engine optimization strategies are very easy to implement due to logical sense with a couple of research factors involved. Keyword optimization is one strategy, once implemented cannot take place immediately. Be patient and give it some time for the search engines to find your site.

By: Jo Han Mok

Improved Search Engine Rank: Google Page Rank Misconceptions

2008-06-26T17:04:00.000-07:00

Improved search engine rank is attainable through good search engine optimization, part of which is the maximizing of your Google Page Rank through intelligent linking with other web pages. In this first part of 2 on the subject of Google Page Rank, we will look at the argument for attaining high listings through a linking strategy.

Google Page Rank is a buzz term at the moment since many believe it to be more important to your search engine listing than search engine optimization. If we ignore for the moment the fact that Page Rank is, in itself, a form of SEO, then there are arguments for and against that belief.

Before we investigate these arguments, letâ€™s understand some fundamentals of search engine listings. First, most search engines list web pages, not domains (websites). What that means is that every web page in a domain has to be relevant to a specific search term if it is to be listed.

Secondly, a search engine customer is the person who is using that engine to seek information. It is not an advertiser or the owner of a website. It is the user seeking information. The form of words that is used by that customer is called a â€˜search termâ€™. This becomes a â€˜keywordâ€™ when applied to a webmaster trying to anticipate the form of words that a user will employ to search for their information.

A search engine works by analyzing the semantic content of a web page and determining the relative importance of the vocabulary used, taking into account the title tags, the heading tags and the first text it detects. It will also check out text related contextually to what it considers to be the main â€˜keywordsâ€™ and then rank that page according to how relevant it calculates it to be for the main theme of the page.

It will then examine the number of other web pages that are linked to it, and regard that as a measure of how important, or relevant to the â€˜keywordâ€™, that the page is. The value of the links is regarded as peer approval of the content. All of these factors determine how high that page is listed for search terms that are similar contextually to the content of the page.

Without doubt, there are web pages that are listed high in the search engine indices that contain very little in the way of useful content on the keywords for which they are listed, and have virtually no contextual relevance to any search term. However, a careful investigation of these sites will reveal two things.

The first is that many such web pages are frequently listed highly only for relatively obscure search terms. If a search engine customer uses a common search term to find the information they are seeking, they will very rarely be led to a site that has little content other than links, but it is possible. The second is that they contains large numbers of links out to other web pages, and it can be assumed that they have at least an equal number of web pages linking back.

It is possible to find such web pages for many keywords. An example is on the first page on Google for the keyword â€˜Data VOIP Solutionsâ€™. There is a website there that is comprised only of links. The site itself has little content, but every link leads to either another website that provides useful content, or another internal page full of more links and no content. That is how links can be used to lift a web page high in the SE listings.

Such sites frequently contain only the bare minimum of conventional search engine optimization, but the competition is so low that they gain high listings. You will also find them to contain large numbers of internal pages, every one of which contain the same internal and external links.

It is true, therefore, that it is possible to get a high listing without much content, but with a large number of links. However, is that a legitimate argument for those promoting links against content? Could you reasonably apply that strategy to your website? Could a genuine website really contain thousands of links to other internal pages and external pages on other websites, and still maintain its intended purpose?

In the second part of this article, titled â€˜Search Engine Rank: Google Page Rank Misconceptionsâ€™ wI will explode some myths about Page Rank, and explain how many people are wasting their time with reciprocal links, and perhaps even losing through them. It may be that a linking strategy is not so much an option, as a choice between the type of website that you want: to provide genuine information or to make money regardless of content.

Improved search engine rank might be synonymous with Google Page Rank, but perhaps only if you want to sacrifice the integrity of your website.

Peter normally has his new websites listed on Google, Yahoo and MSN within two days, and consistently gets high search engine listings. His website Improved Search Engine Rank offers to show you how exactly how he does it, including how Page Rank and SEO can be used together to achieve the highest listings for your keyword.

Has Google Page Rank killed off SEO

2008-06-26T17:03:00.000-07:00

Has Google Page Rank killed of traditional SEO? Search engine optimization has traditionally been the classical way of making your website attractive to search engine spiders, and without good SEO, there was a time when your site had no chance of being highly listed in Google indices, or the index databases of any search engine for that matter.

However, I keep reading on forums and discussion boards that Page Rank is now more important, or at least the number of links back to your website from others. I personally believe this to be only partially true. That is my opinion after results I have received from my own websites, and tests I have carried out.

What Is Page Rank

First, a short rÃ©sumÃ© on what page rank is. Google has a formula based upon links to and from other web pages, both internally between page sin your own website, and externally, between your web pages and those of other websites. The more links back from other web pages to a page on your own website, the higher page you get. The more links away from pages on your website to other web pages, the lower page rank that page gets. It is therefore a balancing act.

The reason for this is that Google decided that the more web pages linking to yours, then the more relevant your page must be to the search term (keyword) concerned. Your page must be important for other pages to be linked to it. This is fine as far as that definition goes, but once webmasters understood this, they began to link with each other until, we have a situation today whereby these links are automatically created by means of software, and the content of the linked pages is irrelevant.

However, until Google tackles this problem, right now the Google formula applies irrespective of the relevance of each linking web page. More detailed information is available on the internet, including the links I provide at the end of this article if you need more information on what Page Rank really is.

Is SEO Important?

Some web pages can get listed on Google and other search engines with very little content, and only a large number of links. I have seen examples, and many forum postings on this, but whenever I investigate these sites they appear to be listed only for fairly obscure keywords that are not popularly used.

My opinion is that on-site SEO is very important, but when sites are equally optimized, then the links from other sites become relevant. There is probably a part of the search engine algorithm that includes an element of back-link density in the primary calculation, but I do not believe that onsite SEO is less important than link density.

My reasons for this belief are the results that I can get with my websites/pages with maximum onsite search engine optimization as far as I know how to do it, in relation to those web pages that I have not optimized, but added lots of links to. The optimized pages always do better that the sites with only back-links.

Page Rank Refers to Pages not Websites

Keep in mind that it is only web PAGES that Page Rank and â€˜link densityâ€™ applies to, and not the whole website. Hence, if you are linked to a page on a website, the home page of which has a PR of 8, this figure â€˜8â€™ is irrelevant to your share of the PR of the page to which you are linked. Most pages have a PR of ZERO, and that is the benefit you get. Zero!

Therefore, when linking to other websites, check out the Page Rank of the page on which your link appears. That is the ranking of you receive a share. Not the home page of the site. Some webmasters will try to con you and state that â€œbecause you are linking to high PR website, the link you provide should be on your Home Pageâ€. That is because a Home Page is normally ranked higher because it is the page that most people optimize as much as they can. It is normally the Home Page that is first listed in Google and Yahoo, and is listed the highest.

This is proof to me that SEO is not dead, and that Page Rank and links to and from other web pages is a ploy used by many who have poor content on their website. I know that good search engine optimization wins every time and that links can make the difference between sites with similar SEO and relevance to the search term used by the search engine user.

So, has Google Page Rank killed off SEO: absolutely not, and good search engine optimization on your web pages will provide you with a higher listing that if you relied purely on links. My reason for this belief is my own experience in getting rapid high listings in the major search engines when my website is correctly designed and optimized.

Donâ€™t listen to the theorists offering Page One listings to everybody: logic tells you that it is impossible for all customers using the same keyword to have a Page One listing, let alone Number One, as many advertise.

Donâ€™t even try to learn the theory â€“ it is too complex and the search engines keep changing the rules. Learn from othersâ€™ successes. Do what they do exactly and you will be OK. SEO will always win â€“ Page Rank is a fad that will last only until Google cottons on to how it is being abused. True search engine optimization will never fail to succeed. Google Page Rank will never kill off good SEO. Write naturally and provide good information on your web pages. That will always work. Period!

Peter normally has his new websites listed on Google, Yahoo and MSN within two days, and consistently gets high search engine listings. His website Improved Search Engine Rank offers to show you how exactly how he does it, including how Page Rank and SEO can be used together to achieve the highest listings for your keyword.

Article Marketing 101: donâ€™t create your own competition

2008-06-26T17:01:00.000-07:00

Article marketing has grown exponentially over the last couple of years due to the now mainstream knowledge of the impact that it can have for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes and even for the authorâ€™s name branding. Arguably the most common purpose for the article marketing method is for search engine optimization, which is ironic because the majority of people who employ article marketing tactics for SEO purposes are actually hurting themselves by creating more competition for their own websites.

Article marketing â€“ what it is

Article marketing is just what the name implies; itâ€™s a marketing tactic that relies on the use of articles. To explain it in a simple manner, an article is written and submitted to article directories where hopefully that article will be picked up by other website owners and published on their websites as well. The benefit for article marketing is derived from the â€œabout the authorâ€ blurb where the article author can either build credibility for themselves as a writer or they can improve the search engine rankings for their website with the use of keyword focused anchor text on the link back to their website.

Article marketing is considered a viral marketing method because from a single article one can obtain dozens or even hundreds of references to their name and website, which is why article marketing is regarded as a highly effective marketing tactic.

Of course, success with article marketing depends on a number of factors. Oneâ€™s success with article marketing will depend on how well the article is written, the locations where the article is initially published as well as the overall demand for the topic that the article is written on. An article written about search engine optimization will likely garner more attention and be picked up by more website owners than an article about the mating habits of African bumblebees because information about search engine optimization is in greater demand than the mating habits of bees.

Article marketing for SEO â€“ the biggest mistake

The biggest mistake that is regularly made by novice article marketers is that they are actually creating more competition for their websites. Unfortunately, this mistake is not limited only those who are new to article marketing; this mistake is being made every day by well meaning, but severely misguided search engine optimization firms, which can negatively affect their clientsâ€™ websites.

Effective SEO article marketing relies on creation of an article that is topically related to the submitterâ€™s website, but not in direct competition for the keywords being targeted on that website. As an example, if you have a website that is about web hosting and your websiteâ€™s target keyword phrase is â€˜Best web hosting servicesâ€™, you absolutely do not want to write an article for use with article marketing that focuses on the phrase â€˜Best web hosting servicesâ€™. You can write about any number of web hosting topics such as reseller hosting, shared hosting, dedicated web hosting, but you do not want to submit an article that will compete with your website for the keyword phrase you are targeting.

The reasoning for this is simple; prominent article directories likely have a higher value to search engines than your website. If you submit an article to a website that has a higher value to search engines than your website does, the article submitted to article directories will likely outrank your website for your intended keywords or phrases; i.e. youâ€™ve created competition for your website. This is not even taking into consideration other website owners that may pick up your article for placement on their website; you may inadvertently create hundreds of competitors for your keywords or keyword phrases from a single article submission.

Donâ€™t create your own competition

The best advice for those who are using article marketing for SEO purposes is to not create competition for your website. By writing a topically related article that is not competing for the keywords you are optimizing your website for, you will avoid creating new competition for your website and likely enjoy a bigger benefit from your article marketing endeavors.

James Drakner offers a freelance ghost writing service; professional ghost writing at affordable rates. http://freelanceghostwriter.com

White Hat Magic to Seize a PageRank 7 in 200 Days

2008-06-26T16:56:00.000-07:00

Want soaring Pagerank? How about in 200 days?

Refresher first. PageRank is googleâ€™s valuation of your website. Your pagerank comes pegged on a scale from 0 to 10.

Uh- okayâ€¦ so what?

Letâ€™s make it so easy that even your cat would mewl.

Think of Pagerank like real estate pricing. The higher your site ranks on that scale, the more valuable it is in Googleâ€™s eyes. You, the webmaster, enjoy explosive benefits the higher your pagerank: your site gets indexed more often, you appear in the top ten placements and people will kill each other to advertise their site on yours. To the tune of thousands of greenbacks a month.

Bottomline: websites of considerable persuasion and influence boast high pagerank.

If your site has less than a Pagerank 4, youâ€™re s nobody. Pagerank 5 means youâ€™re a rising hotshot. Folks would pay $30 a month to place a link on your site. Pagerank 6 means youâ€™re almost a god. Not only would you rank in the top ten search engine rankings for chosen keywords, youâ€™d rake in lotsa moolah from ad revenue.

Are you mewling like a cat yet?

Now that thatâ€™s out of the way, letâ€™s hunker down to getting you a Pagerank 7 in 200 days with some white hat magic.

CREATING A SITE OF MASSIVE INFLUENCE

1) Mosey over a few webhosts that allow you to buy domains on cheap. Iâ€™d recommend godaddy.com or doteasy.com Purchase at least 40 domains across different C Class IPs. The .info , .mobi and .biz variety go for a dime a dozen. Register them and build up a single page on each one. Fill the pages with Quality Content. No scraped info or youâ€™ll get deindexed. Your bucks would go down the drain faster than cash at a casino. Hire a ghostwriter if you must.

Visit rss-info.com This site provides live streaming feed. You will then channel feed from rss-info.com into each of your 40 domains. Ensure that you select feed relevant to the site content and funnel it using the php protocol. Accomplishing this endows your sites with fresh, updated content that both your visitors and search engine robots would love.

WARNING: do not spam the 40 sites with excessive keywords, hidden text or redirects. Avoid cloaking. If Google bans a handful of your sites for indiscretion, the rest of your campaign founders.

2) Now's the exciting part. Create backlinks to each of these sites from domains that wield extremely high pagerank. Itâ€™s easy to accomplish with Netscape.com and NewsVine.com. Now before you get all excited, understand that this tactic will work if you judiciously pick profitable tags. The tag â€˜businessâ€™ ranks a whopper of a pagerank 7 at netscape. (http://www.netscape.com/tag/business). Listing your 40 domains under this directory gets a pagerank 7 backlink!

3) Amp the power. List your domains at DMOZ and Relmaxtop.com . Youâ€™ll garner at least a Pagerank 4 backlink to each site.

4) Post meaningful comments on one or two blogs listed here: courtneytuttle.com/blogs-that-follow/ These blogs have the NoFollow attribute disabled, allowing you to suck in more PR to each of your domains.

5) Post meaningful comments on mattcuts.com, pearsonified.com and scobleizer.com. Google ranks these sites at pagerank 8+. If your sensible comment is approved, you get more rank boosting.

6) Use this string in google search box to find high credibility .edu blogs where you can get quick backlinks from: [[site:.edu inurl:blog "post a comment" -"comments closed" -"you must be logged in" "Your-Key-Word"]] If your link appears on a .edu domain, Google accords your mucho respect. In spades. Ensure you write MEANINGFUL comments on these .edu sites, or Iâ€™ll disown you and send the Italian Mafia to kick your arse and sink you in the Ganges.

7) Wait for the next PageRank update. Twiddle your thumbs and get fat on some MacDonalds quarterpounders to pass the time.

8) Et Voila! After the next update, the Google Toolbar will indicate that ALL your 40 sites have achieved a shiny PageRank 3 or 4. Man, wasnâ€™t that easy?? (FYI, google updates pagerank every three months or so)

9) Now that your sites wield considerable persuasive influence, I want you to create three new domains and have all original 40 sites link to these.

10) Wait for the next pagerank update and BAM! The three new domains now flex a Pagerank 5!. Hallelujah!! But wait. You donâ€™t want a lousy 5. You want at least a seven. So what you do is to create two new domains and have the three pagerank 5s link to that.

11) Wait again. (do you get the pattern here?) Suck on some fries. Get more girlfriends. Take up racing. Then at the next pagerank update, the Google Tool Bar will bring you news that will wet your pants: GOODGRACIOUSGLORIOUSGOD! The two new domains are now Pagerank 6!! Wait. Weâ€™re not done yet. I want you to create a new domain. And guess what? I want you to link the two pagerank 6 sites to your new domain.

12) Wait again. Nuninuninu. By now you should have 10 girlfriends and boast a nice paunch from all those quarterpounders. But so what? After the next pagerank update, your new domain should now be a gloriously persuasive Pagerank 7. Ahh. Now you can kick back and relax. Because with this single website, any other website you link to will be transformed into an instant Pagerank 6. Everyone knows that sites these stellar command unbelievable advertising power. So what you do from hereâ€¦ well, itâ€™s up to your imagination.

13) There are a few more steps to consolidate your explosive position- and you can find them right here: Pagerank 7 Download the PDF and build your empire!

Joseph Plazo is recognized persuasion expert ... but can't persuade his business partners and clients to leave him alone.

He is the author, co-author or creator of several best-selling persuasion, attraction and influence resources. You simply can't be persuaded to miss out on his massive library of free affluence downloads.

Get Your Site Listed Quickly In Search Engines

2008-06-26T16:55:00.000-07:00

These ways include submitting the URL, using keywords, using links, and using blogs to get listed quick.

Tip #1: Submit your URL manually to search engines

Search engines like Google, Altavista and Yahoo all have options for you to manually submit your site. Before submitting, however, it is important to make sure of the following:

1. All pages on your site are complete. Search engine spiders wonâ€™t touch incomplete sites.

2. Your site is not full of spam and/or excessive use of keywords. Yet again, spiders wonâ€™t touch spam sites, which means your site will be skipped over if it contains lots of spam.

When you submit the site, make sure to submit it only once to each search engine. Submitting multiple times to the same search engine will get you no where. In fact, they might keep your site from ever having a chance at being listed on the search engine.

Tip #2: Use keywords to get spiders to come to your site

Search engine spiders absolutely love sites with good, well-placed and well-used keywords and key phrases. In other newsletters, we have covered the correct use of keywords and key phrases, so you might already be familiar with it. If not, weâ€™ll briefly touch on it right now.

Keywords are words that are used frequently on a site that search engines look for. The key to correct usage of keywords is to make them fit naturally throughout a piece of content and not look like spam. Before writing your content for your site, take a second to decide what the content is about. Then make a list of keywords or key phrases that seem to fit with the topic at hand. Next, write the content and try to sprinkle in the keywords or key phrases throughout the content in a natural, non-distracting way. When you are done writing the content, you should count the number of keywords or key phrases. Then divide that by the total number of words in content. If the number you get is between 1-3%, youâ€™re good to go. If itâ€™s below 1%, try to naturally add in keywords or key phrases. If itâ€™s above 5%, try to take out keywords or key phrases. Aim for the perfect balance of between 1 and 3%.

Tip #3: Use links

Having another site link to you will make spiders that visit the first site come to your site as a result of the link. Many owners of sites related to yours are happy to post a link to your site on their links page. Some might require what is called â€œreciprocal linkingâ€. This basically means that if they place a link to your site on their page, they want you to return the favor by posting a link to their page on your site. Doing so helps both sites better gain the attention of search engine spiders and helps them both to get listed quickly.

Tip #4: Install a blog on your site

Blogs are extremely popular and quickly listed by search engines. Places like Google are known to index(or list a site/blog) far faster than they list regular web sites. Blogs are listed by search engines like Google within days of being created, whereas it can take weeks and months for search engines to notice a site.
Installing a blog on your site is really easy. All you have to do is install a program such as WordPress on your web site and then use that to make blog postings. If you run a sports site, for instance, you could try making twice a week posts on the blog about sports news. Doing so will help your site as a whole get noticed quicker by search engines.
If you apply just one of the tips above to your web site, you will get listed quicker than expected.

Creating a blog on your web site is quicker than ever before. Do it today and watch how quickly and effortlessly your site gets listed on search engines!

Terry Detty finds press release services and SEO marketing software his passion. In addition to marketing, he enjoys reading and occasionally goes out for a short walk. His latest interest is a newtime and attendance program he's been using.

What is SEO: Myth or Reality? Some Thoughts on Search Engine Optimization

2008-06-26T16:54:00.000-07:00

What is SEO? Have you ever though about what you are trying to achieve with search engine optimization, and what you were doing with your website to achieve it? Have you never wondered if there were better ways to get to where you want to be as a result of SEO?

I have â€“ frequently. And I have looked closely at what I am doing with my website and whether or not it improves it. In fact, it is not your website that your have to optimize, but each individual web page. I have come to the conclusion that as Google, in particular, make changes to their requirements in order that you get a high listing â€“ or listed at all for that matter â€“ the less I have to do to optimize my website.

In fact, when I look closely, what I do in SEO these days is simply common sense, and what I should be doing is to design my site to the advantage of my customers. I have had people write to me proclaiming to be SEO experts and criticizing my bad HTML. â€˜Crapâ€™ it was called by one, yet my website with â€˜crapâ€™ HTML is higher in the search engine listings that theirs. Perhaps they canâ€™t find the right keywords, but they are the experts.

So HTML is not important. We are told that Meta tags are no longer important. So what is left? Ensuring that each pageâ€™s title is the same as the keyword it is written round â€“ well, that is just common sense. That is what I would do anyway, so that my visitors would know what the page was about. I should also put these in H1 tags. Ok, thatâ€™s simple to do. Nothing mystical there.

What else? Oh, yes. The keyword density. Surprise, surprise, the ideal is to have your keyword once in the first 100 characters and again in the last paragraph of a page with 400 â€“ 500 words. Any more words than that, then put it in once again. Donâ€™t believe anybody that tells you that you must have 1% - 3% keyword density. That means 5 â€“ 15 keywords in a 500 word page! Thatâ€™s old hat and a fast way to search engine oblivion. These days are over.

Thereâ€™s not much left of classical SEO to worry about. The two majors that I have left to consider are internal and external linking strategies. Letâ€™s look at external links first. They are important, and Google have stated so, but for how long? There are rumors that back-links are going to become less important since content is now taking second place to artificially formed links.

At one time, Google looked upon links back to your site from another as a sign that your site was considered to be an authority on the subject. I will use the word â€˜siteâ€™, but it should really be â€˜pageâ€™ since the Google term is PageRank, and refers to individual web pages, not complete web sites. And rightly so, because if a website thought that your content would be useful to their readers then they would provide them with a link to your relevant web page.

Now, however, links are artificially generated, sometimes software generated, and are effectively useless since, although they appear on a website, they do so from a so-called â€˜linksâ€™ page that is full of nothing but masses of links. Now, the very websites that links and good keyword density were meant to shove off the web are now appearing back at the top of the listings. No content but masses of links. Google know this, and will likely take some action against it.

Internal linking is a separate subject, and one on which I specialize. The arrangement of your web pages, and design of your internal linking, are critical to achieving good listings on search engines. Not only your internal linking strategy, but also the design of each individual page. There are certain sites that will not get into the top 10 without radical changes, and I have one or two of them due to the content that I want on each site and the function that I want them to serve. Eventually they will as I increase the number of pages, but for the meantime I am not too bothered. I get plenty of traffic anyway.

So that got me to thinking again. Why should I bother much with SEO if all I need do is to design my website logically and make sure that my internal links provide the best possible service to my visitors, without confusing them with dozens of options on each page?

Why should I bother with all these artificial links if I can get good links and lots of traffic through article marketing? And then I realized that I had no need of the links purely as an external SEO tool; i.e. to provide me with better Google PageRank, because I was getting plenty of traffic anyway through people clicking on my links in my articles, or resource boxes.

So I decided not to! I am now going to run a few campaigns with no SEO at all other than the obvious ways of providing my visitors with a good service when they visit my website. Then I will find the truth about the matter. What is SEO: myth or reality?

Peter is not an SEO expert, but somebody that studies the subject. For more information visit Improved Search Engine Rank where he offers to dissect one of his websites that reached the top 5 in Google and Yahoo two weeks after submission. He writes from his website Article Services that is in the top 5 of all major search engines against 850 million others.

SEO Re-analyzed

2008-06-26T16:53:00.000-07:00

The Web is probably the only place to get proper information on almost any topic that keeps haunting the human mind time to time. It's important that one gives some thoughts prior to performing the search.

It doesn't matter what ever your search query is, the Web search engine is undoubtedly the best choice to get answered from, and by answers I mean genuine answers that clears all comprehensions. Search engine optimization requires a strong organization that will put you above your competition.

The web has numerous answers to a question that is genuine , sanguine or possibly any thing that the human brain could ever think of asking. These searches are conducted by a set of search spiders. The Search Engines have there own set of algorithm defined by their Engineers to rank the websites.

Theoretically, a spider can begin traveling the internet from a single web page and follows networks of links to grab information from your Web pages. The information it grabs is sorted according to specific algorithms or different criteria when determining their ranking system. One problem of search engine positioning is that search engines are always changing their algorithms. This means that each one will sort out the information that is needed for their database. One engine may consider a particular factor such as "popularity" to be

important while another may look at "themes" to be the most important information.
The spider will visit the web page and perform the following tasks:
1. confirm the existence of the web page; may index at that time or come back at a later date
2. index page content (using partial or full-text indexing)
3. identify all hyper links to other Web resources (this is an indication of popularity and is becoming increasingly important)
4. proceed to follow the hyper links, visiting the referenced Web pages and repeating steps 1-3 above.

Search engine optimization is misunderstood and despised by those who have had consistently failed at using it, or have been repeatedly beaten by those who were successful with it. Success is often created by knowing where to start, and how to scale, and which battles will be lost before they are ever fought. In order to be a successful SEO analyst one has to follow certain rules. These rules are the guidelines and if followed properly will definitely enhance the search.

1)Searching by Means of Subject Directories:If you are clear about the topic of your query, start with a Web directory rather than a search engine. Directories probably won't give you anywhere near as many references as a search engine will, but they are more likely to be on topic. Web directories usually come equipped with their own keyword search engines that allow you to search through their indexes for the information you need.

2)Searching by Means of Search Engines:This is where things start to get complicated. Search engines are trickier than they look!If you understand how search engines organize information and run queries, you can maximize your chances of getting hits on URLs that matter.

And the last but not the least important things. Be specific in your search. Use proper keywords and meta tags. Once you have selected a page to be optimized and the exact search keywords and key phrases we are going to use, all that is left for us to do is insert these keywords in their proper places and we have pretty much completed the optimization process. Search engine optimization is the process of putting selected keywords and key phrases into a given web site, using proper placement techniques and carefully using the correct wording, in direct response to what was said earlier on positioning. That's all it really means basically.

Now coming to an important aspect or rather the negative part of SEO , generally known as black hat SEO. The dark side of SEO known as Blackhat â€œBH "derives from the white hat and black hat label from the early hacker days. Most people view hackers as someone who is evil and malicious, but really a hacker is just someone trying to learn more about computers, and gain more insight into it. For people that swear by only knowing white hat seo and never meddling in black hat, they are either lying, because everyone gets curious sometime (and letâ€™s not forget, some tactics labeled BH now at some point was considered legal and WH years ago) or they are selling themselves short by not learning as much as they can about SEO.
I think people need to learn both parts. Even if they are so anti-black hat seo, itâ€™s something you have to learn just to know or separate your methods and tactics with when optimizing a website for the search engines.

People who have been optimizing the web for some time now, must keep patience. Sites have risen and fallen in search engine at times. They have also been fluctuations in rankings on a day to day basis. When a search engine puts your website inside the database. Once inside the database the search engine changes their algorithms , thereby changing the rankings of the site. If basic techniques are optimized the site weathers the changes in search engine algorithms. Some search engines change their algorithms every other week to keep their data fresh and relevant.
Being persistent is also important. By keeping accurate records and reviewing them on a weekly or monthly basis chances of completing all necessary tasks are enhanced. Persisting at these tasks helps to go one step ahead of competition. Keeping in mind the theme and name of sites, focus should b kept do that it doesn't slip out of your hand's grasps.
Last but not the least it is important that one continues to upload data on the site on a steady schedule. Keeping these factors in mind marketing of a site in seo becomes more easy.

The Most Important Factors for On-page Optimization

2008-06-26T16:51:00.000-07:00

On-page optimization is nothing but techniques that you bring in, while designing the web pages, that are helpful in making the pages Search Engine Friendly. Search engines are trying to provide their users with the most relevant sites for any particular query. Maybe your website has a lot of material and is relevant to searches for your product, but it may not have been designed or written in a way that is search engine friendly. The correction of design mistakes and the rewriting of the websiteâ€™s text and meta tags is what is known as on-page search engine optimization.

Most Important Factors:- Before you kick start the SEO campaign, it is important to keep in mind the following things in order to achieve on page optimization:-

1. Include your keyword in your Domain Name
It is far better to think about search engine optimization at the very beginning of the process. For example, if it is at all possible, choose a domain name that will allow you to include your most important keyword or search term in your URL.

2. Enrich your Pages with Content
Many people want to get a high ranking for various keywords or keyword phrases, but if you look at the text on their web pages you can hardly find these vital words. This is a major misunderstanding. It is true that your main keywords and key phrases should be in your title tag and your description meta tags, and even in the keywords meta tag, but they must also appear on the page itself and they must appear in some strategic places on that page. Search Engines will not recognize that your page is truly about a Product/Service unless these words appear in headlines on the page, in the opening paragraph, in the file or domain name in link text and in the body text of your page.

3. Use different Title Tags for all pages
The most important sentence on any web page is the title tag. The title tag gives the search engine a good indication as to what your page is all about. Incorporate your main keywords or search phrases into your title tag, and keep them at the very front of the sentence. These keywords are more important than your company name.

The title tags of each of the sub-pages of the site should reflect the main content of those pages. Never use the same title tag for all the pages of the site.

4. Description Tag
Just as the title tag is the most important sentence or phrase on any page, the description tag is the most important paragraph on any page. Summarize the gist of your page in two or three pages, again incorporating the keywords and search phrases for which you think people will use when searching for your site.

5. Keyword Research
Here you may need the services of an SEO Professional. Generally people make the mistake by putting lot of keywords and in a hope to attract search engine they do keyword stuffing and ultimately it goes against your seo campaign as search engines treat it as keyword spamming. It is suggested that you find 1 to 3 keywords for your content and concentrate only on these keywords. But if you choose less keywords then you have to research extensively on these keywords to find out which keyword is most crucial. Since there is no point to optimize your website on a keyword that is no one is searching for. So do a extensive research or get a help of some expert to choose the keywords.

6. Anchor Text
So far we have placed the keywords in the strategic places of the web page: the title, the description, the headlines and the body text. Now we have to see that the keywords are included in clickable link text on the page. Whenever you are linking to sub pages or other pages of your site, make sure that your keywords are included in the clickable portions of the links.

7. Webpage Naming
Instead of naming your files as if they didnâ€™t matter, such as page1.html, page2.html, put your keywords and keyword phrases in your file names. If you do a search on Google for any particular item you will see that wherever your search keyword appears it is listed in the Google results in bold text. Usually you will see this bold text in the title that is displayed, and in the descriptive text that Google displays underneath the title.

8. Site Map
Getting all of your pages indexed is so important, that it is also prudent to take another step that will ensure that all of your pages are visited by search engine robots. A site map is a page that has text links to all of the pages of your site. A site map serves two purposes - It helps users to find what they are looking for on the site by providing an outline summary of all of your pages as well helps search engine robots to land on the interior pages. After you build your site map page, be sure to make a link to it from your home page and the other important pages of your website.

In addition to a normal site map page, you can also make an XML site map, upload it to the server and then register it with the Google site map tool. This process is easy to accomplish, and it will supply you with important statistical information from Google as well as help get all of your pages indexed.

Conclusion:-
On-Page optimization is the first step towards getting a high rank in search engines, Off-page campaign's success lies with the On-Page factors. So I suggest before running your SEO Campaign, either work on on-page factors first or include it into your plan. You will get better and fast results if your on-page factors are taken care well.

Sukhdeep Singh Komal is founder and CEO of Soft solutions, SEO company specializing in one-way link building campaigns. Offers natural search engine optimization, corporate blog, Website copywriting and article/ directory submission solutions.

SEO for Baidu

2008-06-26T16:50:00.000-07:00

Introduction

Baidu is most popular search engine in China. Google China is second to Baidu. Lots of Internet marketers in the West do not know much about Baidu, and assume itsâ€™ ranking algorithm is similar to Google China. It is purely based on the assumption that when it can beat Google in a large market, itsâ€™ ranking algorithm should be comparable to Google.

Unfortunately, it is wrong. Baiduâ€™s search result is mixed up with lots of paid links and natural links. It is difficult to distinguish them. In addition, the natural ranking algorithm is not very sophisticated and many spamming and illogical results can be found. According to a study by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) in year end of 2006, Chinese users perceived that Googleâ€™s search relevancy is much better than Baidu.

You can click this link and learn more aboutInternet usage in China

Why Baidu can be No.1 in China?

If itsâ€™ ranking algorithm is much inferior to Google, how come Baidu can be more popular in China market? There are 4 possible reasons I can think of:

1. According to CNNIC, Google China has server down time and frustrated users.
2. Baidu is developed by local Chinese, driven by patriotism and language friendliness, general Chinese users tend to use Baidu.
3. Baidu was established before Google entered into China market. Thus, Baidu has first mover advantage.
4. Baidu is famous for itsâ€™ strong MP3 search and lots of young internet users are searching for songs in MP3 format daily.

However, CNNIC also revealed that white-collar urban professional in major China cities, and citizens with overseas study background tend to use and love using Google China. Usually, their spending power is much higher, and Google China has advantage in this niche.

Optimization Tips You Need to Know

1. Title and Meta Tags

Like Google, Title tag is also very important. Unlike Google, Meta description and Meta keywords tags are still very useful in improving ranking in Baidu. As always, we do recommend clients add meaningful Meta description and keyword tags because they are still important for some popular localized search engines.

2. Content

It is similar to other popular search engines. Your website copies should have keywords you want to optimize. The higher the keyword density, the better is the result. If your keyword density is too high, it can adversely affect search engine rankings in other search engines, however. Therefore, we recommend 6-12% for Baidu optimization.

3. Linking

Unlike Google, Baidu does not have a sophisticated algorithm to determine link relevancy and link quality. Quantity seems more important than link quality. Incorporating keywords in internal anchor text has some positive effect on Baidu ranking.

4. Content Language

Since Baidu is developed in Mainland China, if your site has simplified Chinese, you are easier to get exposure in Baidu.

People may also wonder if English keywords are used in China. From our experience, it really depends on your industry and targeted visitors. For example, English keywords are used by high income office workers, manufacturing and trading firms, or banking professional. If your target is general mass market, Chinese keywords are dominant in frequency of use.

5. Alt Tag

Alt tag with keywords incorporated into Alt text is good for Baidu optimization. However, it is not advised to stuff too many keywords inside.

6. Server

If your site is mainly targeted for Mainland China, we recommend you hosting your site in Mainland China. It helps your Baidu ranking significantly.

It is not essential to get .com.cn or .cn domain names, however.

7. Geographical Market

China is a very big company. Internet marketers are difficult to target every province and city of China. You must determine the location of your high value customers. If they are mainly based in Mainland China, your site should use simplified Chinese. If you are targeting Hong Kong and Taiwan, your site should use traditional Chinese.
Of course, it does no harm if you include both Chinese versions. If the wordings can be more localized to the city or province you target for, it can yield better conversion rate.

Also, Baidu is only popular in Mainland China, particularly in the northern part. In Hong Kong and Taiwan, Baidu is an insignificant search engine player.

Author:
Jimsun Lui is working in a search engine optimization company called Agog Digital Marketing Strategy Ltd. He also manages his personal SEO portal written in Chinese.

Top 5 SEO Mistakes

2008-06-26T16:49:00.000-07:00

Search engine optimization is one of the best tools that most Web business owners can utilize in order to be able to make the most out of their business online. Unfortunately, not a lot of website or Web business owners know enough about SEO and what it can do to help them and their business.

If they are able to utilize SEO properly, then they will be able to increase their website traffic, and at the same time improve their sales, giving website owners the advantage over their competition online. Since not all of these Web business owners possess the knowledge of what search engine optimization is all about, and its possible benefits to their online business, they sometimes commit a few mistakes in their attempts to utilize such a program for their advantage. One of the mistakes that Web business owners often commit is that they spend too much time on the design of their website, and not enough time on the content. Keep in mind that the content of your website is more important than the design, which is why people who invest too much money on site designs primarily instead of focusing on its content will only end up wasting it since this will only bring in a few people to visit their website. Instead, try to invest in copywriting initially, and only spend money on the site design later on. Web business owners sometimes forget the importance of great content, and how they should create fresh content. Doing so will greatly benefit their online business since search engines will reward websites that offer fresh content to their visitors, regardless of its format. Some Web business owners tend to overlook this aspect, and they do not implement this in their websites, causing their website to not generate the desired amount of traffic. However, online business owners should not do this if they are only aiming to improve their search engine ranking. One way that they can improve their SEO ranking is by posting blogs or forums that its visitors can use and interact with other users, making them come back for more later on, thereby increasing the generated traffic. This is only possible, however, if the owners add a blog that contains something that can interest their site's visitors. This is where our third mistake comes in. There are some Web business owners who do not bother to offer something unique, especially in their site's content. If you are able to properly optimize your site by offering something unique and interesting to your targeted market, then your site can greatly benefit from the improvement in search engine results since people will be linking to your site through different mediums such as blogs and forums, creating more inbound links later on. Another mistake that online business owners commit is their use of inappropriate keyword phrases. It is important to remember that in order to be able to optimize the search engine result of your website, you need to make sure that you pick the appropriate keyword phrases, especially if you are only a small or mid-sized company. You should use the keywords that your potential customers may use in their search in the Web, and such keywords should be used in specific areas of your webpage. Lastly, Web business owners sometimes do not label their links and images descriptively, making it very difficult for their visitors to know what they are being directed to. Being descriptive as possible not only helps visitors, but it can also help online businesses, especially those trying to market a particular product since Web business owners can use their main keywords and phrases in their link and image labeling, making it easier for them to direct potential customers to their site. Vanessa Arellano Doctor
Search Engine Optimization SEO Company

Websites You Should Be Getting Links From

2008-06-26T16:48:00.000-07:00

Everyone knows the importance of links when it comes to increasing your search engine results. The first question you must ask is where to get links from. There are two strategies here.

1. The most effective way to identify the â€œrightâ€ sites to get links from should be based on who is linking to your competition defined by who outranks you on Google for your identified search term. Ideally you should be evaluating who links to the #1 search result in Google for the keywords or keyword phrases youâ€™re optimizing for. If you get the same sites to link to your site in the right way youâ€™ll be in the top position on Google for that given keyword phrase.

There are a variety of methods to determine which sites are linking to the #1 result in Google for the keyword phrase youâ€™re targeting. Begin by identifying which site is in the #1 position for your search term. Once youâ€™ve identified this site, do one of the following:

â€¢ Google Search. Go to Google.com and type in the following:

Link: www.competitor.com and press return. Be sure to replace the â€œcompetitor.comâ€ with the name of the site youâ€™ve already identified as having the #1 position on Google for your search term.

The result will be a series of sites linking to your competitor. The only downside to this method is that you will not know which sites are more important than others (i.e. number of links linking into those sites, Google PR, keyword content on pages, etc.)

â€¢ Alexa. Go to Alexa.com and type in the name of the site youâ€™re researching. Alexa.com is a tool used to measure the popularity of sites using the Alexa toolbar. Because not everyone uses the Alexa toolbar, the information is only directionally correct.

Once you get the resultant website, you will see a number of options listed. To the right of the thumbnail image, click â€œSites Linking Inâ€.

This option returns a list of sites that Alexa has identified as linking into the site youâ€™re researching. This can be an adequate starting spot for your link building campaign.

â€¢ Online SEO Tools. Using online marketing tools to automatically generate a list of sites linking into your competitorâ€™s site that provides link details (Google PR, Link text, Number of inbound links to competitorâ€™s site, Page title, etc.) is the most effective way to generate a list of targeted sites for your link development efforts.

Iâ€™ve personally bought and used about a dozen different products to help me keep an eye on my competition and more importantly build an effective linking campaign. In less than 30 seconds some of these tools let you know exactly which sites are linking to the #1 positioned website and give you the information needed to contact them and request a link.

You can use whatever tool you want as long as it provides you a list of sites linking into your competitor and a way to prioritize that list. If you start to develop links from the highest quality sites first, your climb to the #1 spot on Google will happen that much faster.

â€¢ Identify Authority Websites. Authority websites are those sites linking to 3 or more of your competitors. You can save time by using an online SEO tool to find these sites. If you do not have a tool at your disposal, you can accomplish this manually using the following method:

1. Search for competitive sites by visiting Google and searching for your most important search term.

2. Create a spreadsheet of the top 100 sites â€œlinking inâ€ to each of your top 5 competitors (Microsoft Excel is a good tool for this)

3. Sort Alphabetically

4. While looking at the list, see if any of the website URLâ€™s are duplicated across your list. If the site appears 3 or more times, highlight it.

5. Once youâ€™ve developed your list of competitive sites, you should visit each one to determine how your competitors are listed.

Once youâ€™ve identified your Authority Websites, contact them. Model the strategy that your competitors have used. If these sites are Directories, look for a directory submission form. If the links are from articles that your competitors submitted, submit your own. If all you can locate is an email, ask the webmaster to include your site. You may also suggest a link exchange if the opportunity arises.

Michael Fleischner is an Internet marketing expert with more than 12 years of marketing experience. To discover how toimprove search engine rankings on Google and other major search engines vist http://www.webmastersbookofsecrets.com and the Marketing Blog.

Search Engine Optimization for Dynamic Websites

2008-06-26T16:46:00.000-07:00

One of the major issues which have always raised questions among the search engine optimization fraternity is" Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Dynamic Websites". In this whitepaper, we will show you how to optimize dynamic websites for top search engine rankings. But, first the basics.

What are "Dynamic Websites"?

Dynamic websites are websites whose pages are generated on the fly. Unlike static pages (primarily .htm/.html pages), dynamic pages are generated when an user triggers an action through that particular page.
Here isa sample dynamic URL-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/search/results.pl?q=%22dynamic+websites%22&tab=news &go=homepage
As per the above example of www.bbc.co.uk, the dynamic part (i.e. the part) of the URL which changes as per surfer request is the part after the question mark (?)

What are the problems that search engines face in indexing Dynamic URLs?

1. Search engines often consider a dynamic URL as an infinite set of links.

2. Since dynamic URLs find maximum application in online shopping carts, there is a possibility of incorporating a session id to a particular page. As session ids of that particular page change, the search engine spider needs to index an infinite number of copies of the same page, which is a Herculean task for them.

3. Proceeding with the same logic presented in point #2, indexing the same dynamic page might overload the servers of the search engines and therefore prevent the search engines to present with the most relevant information in the fastest possible time.
Here is what Google says about indexing of dynamic websites-
Reasons your site may not be included: Your pages are dynamically generated. We are able to index dynamically generated pages. However, because our web crawler can easily overwhelm and crash sites serving dynamic content, we limit the amount of dynamic pages we index. (Source - http://www.google.com/webmasters/)

What are the options that you have in order to make a search engine spider index your Dynamic URLs?

1. Use of softwares - Exception Digital Enterprise Solutions (http://www.xde.net ) offers a software which can change the dynamic URLs to static ones. Named XQASP, it will remove the "?" in the Query String and replace it with "/", thereby allowing the search engine spiders to index the dynamic content.

Example -
http://www.my-online-store.com/books.asp?id=1190 will change to
http://www.my-online-store.com/books/1190.

The latter being a static URL, it can easily be indexed by the search engine spiders.

2. Use of CGI/Perl scripts - One of the easiest ways to get your dynamic sites indexed by search engines is using CGI/Perl scripts. Path_Info or Script_Name is a variable in a dynamic application that contains the complete URL address (including the query string information). In order to fix this problem, you'll need to write a script that will pull all the information before the query string and set the rest of the information equal to a variable. You can then use this variable in your URL address.

Example - http://www.my-online-store.com/books.asp?id=1190

When you are using CGI/Perl scripts, the query part of the dynamic URL is assigned a variable. So, in the above example "?id=1190" is assigned a variable, say "A". The dynamic URL http://www.my-online-store.com/coolpage.asp?id=1190 will change to http://www.my-online-store.com/books/A through CGI/Perl scripts which can easily be indexed by the search engines.

3. Re-configuring your web servers-

Apache Server - Apache has a rewrite module (mod_rewrite) that enables you to turn URLs containing query strings into URLs that search engines can index. This module however, isn't installed with Apache software by default, so you need to check with your web hosting company for installation.

ColdFusion - You'll need to reconfigure ColdFusion on your server so that the "?" in a query string is replaced with a '/' and pass the value to the URL.

4. Creation of a Static Page linked to an array of dynamic Pages - This approach is very effective, especially if you are the owner of a small online store selling a few products online. Just create a static page linking to all your dynamic pages. Optimize this static page for search engine rankings. Include a link title for all the product categories, place appropriate "alt" tag for the product images along with product description containing highly popular keywords relevant to your business (you can conduct keyword research for your site through http://www.wordtracker.com). Submit this static page along with all the dynamic pages in various search engines, conforming to the search engine submission guidelines.
How Amazon.com, Earth's Biggest Bookstore, coped with the issue of indexing of dynamic URLs?

A search in Google for internet marketing books, yielded a result that takes you directly to the appropriate dynamic page at Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0395683297/103-0475212-8205437.
Since the above URL does not contain any query strings, all search engines can index Amazon.com's products. Amazon.com uses this method to get its product selections indexed by search engines. This is very important for Amazon, because being an online bookstore, it is very natural for them to adopt dynamic URLs yet it was equally important for them to make their dynamic URLs search engine index friendly.

Conclusion
Even a few years back, most of the major search engines did not index dynamic URLs, thereby often preventing top search engine rankings for the online stores. With Google starting to index dynamic URLs a few months ago, the picture is going to change in the coming days. This is more so because Google's numero uno position is currently being threatened by Microsoft's MSN (developing its own search engine) and Yahoo! who recently acquired Overture, the biggest player in the PPC Search Engine industry.
To read more articles click on http://www.searchengine-optimization-guru.com/seo-whitepapers.html

Author BIO â€“ With over 100 clients, SEOguru Technologies, a SEO, SEM and web development agency, delivers measurable returns of your marketing investment through its various solutions.

How To Choose the Right SEO Content Services

2008-06-26T16:44:00.000-07:00

Much discussion and is found there outside in various forms such as the forum, the E-zines, the blogs and the sites which help to inform you on what occurs in the world of SEO. SEO satisfy without any doubt and anywhere read it to you, are the same messageâ€¦ that it is absolutely A must have if you want to gain any normal positions in the search engines. Consequently we enter the whole not very about the services content with SEO. The questions arise as for which companies can really provide these services in the suitable way.

Before I enter the way of correctly seeking a service content with SEO worthy of your time, I want to put a question initially, a little a personal question about your character. How much easily are you persuaded in products and services? Now, to be right I am not provocative your intelligence which I want to make a remark. The point being that the majority among us are generally in position which we worked very hard and want to see paying with far all our hard work. Knowing this passion we make have chosen companies to attack on us like robbers. Yes, these companies know that we are desperate for results, that we have a certain quantity of funds which we are been willing to sacrifice in the name of gaining the exposure and the prey on these things to oblige us to buy their products with their astonishing words and promise to make our money behind on our small investment.

This really indicates about us? I say to us because we all are in same position. It indicates that we know the results which we want really sure but not on the way in which to obtain it. We know enough to enter our individualâ€™s hours of expenditure of our hour to appear outside even if at the end it does not establish. Worse still, we will continue to test until we obtained it right. Now, I hope that I obtained to you thinking because what is next can be one of the largest savers of time when I can never offer to you. We know that in order to obtain results on the World Wide Web which you must be found in the search engines and not simply but in the higher search engines. When I say â€œthe higher search enginesâ€ what comes to mind? I bet that we all have at least 1 of 2 that that flickered with our heads immediately (Google and Yahoo). Yes there are others, but we know asset' on this subject to understand that these 2 for sure us must rise to the top above. We also know that we need the contents of quality which begins usually our search for service content with SEO.

Here a small list to quickly help you to weed by all exaggeration and promises to make tons of the money:

1. No SEO Content Service can guarantee any position with any keyword, because only the Search Engines really know how they work and they know they change all the time which in return changes results.

2. Search for a service online and look for those sites that are getting natural results. What I mean is, make sure they are found on the first and second pages and not in the paid advertisement areas. Why choose a company that is not getting results in a manner that they are now offering you as a service? Because it means that possibly they can't!

3. Read the content of the website you are researching carefully and decide if it makes sense or not. This is important because some services know how to fill up a site with keywords but when you get to reading it, it is not clear what they are writing about. Example here is you do a search find a site on the first page of Google, you think "alright, I found a company that can do what they say" but then you read through the content and you are totally lost now and not sure what they are offering. Do you want to loose business because people are unclear about what you offer?

4. Start a dialog with the company you found and see if they are responsive to you. Look for things like a way to contact them online and on the phone. I am sure you don't want to sign up for a service, pay them and now you are waiting for your services to be taken care of and now you are wasting more time.

5. Watch out for mass marketing emails and phone calls of people trying to sell you their services and saying all the right words. Yes, look at 1 -4 here and make sure you can apply these tips.

6. Watch out for companies who look you into long term contracts! These "seo experts" will convince you that you need to be on a program for a long time to get results. While this may be true, that doesn't mean if for some reason you need to stop because after 6 months you are not seeing any results that you must stay with them. A true SEO Company will not need to lock you into a long term contract because if they provide the services they claim there should be no worries then.

7. Understand most of all that there are no instant results in SEO services. To get natural results this does take time. Know also that when using SEO Content Services this is to help build your sites reputation to the search engines as a trusted source and a site that delivers what the searchers are looking for.

To sum this up, choose based on real results not empty promises. Many SEO services or even tools have no real effect without quality SEO content. Filling your site up with a ton of keywords but not focused on giving people facts about your company and services is only going to hurt you. Pick the SEO Content Service that can provide you with your needs.

http://www.promotion-seo.com/
About The Author: Sarfaraz Khan has been writing and providing these services for over 4 years.

Does Your Search Engine Optimization Company Understand Your Marketing Strategy

2008-06-26T16:42:00.000-07:00

However, any search engine optimization company worth its salt can achieve high rankings of some sort. The true question is whether those search engine rankings are for targeted phrases that are in line with your overall marketing strategy. In order for your search engine optimization campaign to be truly successful, a search engine optimization company must understand your business, products and services enough that it can accurately promote them on the Internet.

Unique Differentiators

Every company has them. Every search engine optimization company should be interested in knowing what they are. These vital components of your marketing strategy can be a huge determinant in the keyphrases that are targeted in your optimization campaign.

For example, do you provide customized solutions in an otherwise highly-commoditized industry? Modifiers like "specialty" and "customized" added to your keyphrases will help you to obtain the types of visitors most likely to be looking for exactly what you offer. This is only one example - a typical marketing plan will detail several points that effectively differentiate the company from its competition, and a good search engine optimization firm will take the time to understand what these are. By knowing and understanding these points of differentiation, an optimization company will be able to get the most out of your campaign.

High-Profit Segments

Most companies have certain products or services that are more profitable than others that they offer. Some companies may also have some new products or services that they are aggressively targeting. Without the knowledge of these facts, your search engine optimization company is likely to target all areas of your business equally. Clearly, this would not serve your company well if your marketing strategy was calling for phase-outs of certain product or service lines, a focus on higher margin business, or aggressive promotion of new offerings. Allocation of targeted keyphrases must be in line with your marketing strategy in order for you to get the most out of the campaign, and a quality search engine optimization company will pursue the data that it needs to make a proper allocation.

Defining Prospects

Are your prospects already educated about your industry, or are they looking for solutions to a particular problem? Are they a mix of both? Your search engine optimization company should be asking you about the makeup of your client base. Targeting highly technical and specific keyphrases (such as "email deliverability testing platforms") could attract highly-educated prospects, while targeting solution-based keyphrases (such as "marketing through email") will target someone who is looking for a solution while not necessarily understanding exactly how it is provided. Does your marketing strategy have a preference as to which sort of prospect you seek? Is it a mixture of both? If so, what is the percentage breakdown? Your search engine optimization company should be asking you these questions in order to bring you the most qualified prospects.

Change over Time

Unless you are in one of those rare industries that hasn't changed much for 50 years, your marketing strategy will likely shift to accommodate new challenges and new opportunities. As an extension of your marketing team, a good search engine optimization company will want to keep abreast of these changes and adjust your campaign according to what is current today. All too often, a company will change its products or services, adjust its prospect profile, or decide to focus on other areas of business without letting the search engine optimization company know that its marketing strategy has changed. A quality search firm will be proactive in finding out if any of these changes have occurred and will address them at the same time that you are, assuring that your search engine optimization campaign is in full alignment with your current marketing goals.

These represent only a few examples of how a good search engine optimization firm will want to fully understand your marketing strategy throughout the lifetime of your search engine optimization campaign. While it is true that no single company ever understands your business as well as your company does, it's also true that a search engine optimization company with a stellar track record will understand search engine optimization better than your company will. The marriage of knowledge between the two entities can be the single largest determinant in the level of success (or failure) of your campaign. If you suspect that your search engine optimization company is taking a cookie-cutter approach to your campaign and is not taking the time to fully understand your marketing strategy, it may be advisable to look elsewhere.

(C) Medium Blue 2007

About the Author

Scott Buresh is the CEO of Medium Blue, a search engine optimization company. Scott has contributed content to many publications including Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004), MarketingProfs, ZDNet, WebProNews, Lockergnome, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. Medium Blue, which was recently named the number one search engine optimization company in the world by PromotionWorld, serves local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Download Medium Blue's latest exclusive whitepaper, "Adding Search to Your Marketing Mix," for more insight.

How to use SEO or Search Engine Optimization for High Google Listings

2008-06-26T16:35:00.000-07:00

If you know how to use SEO to get a high listing in search engines, or are an expert in search engine optimization for high Google listings, then you need read no more of this article. Your website obviously has at least one page in the top 10 of Google, MSN and Yahoo, and you have as much traffic as you need for your success.

However, if not, then you need some advice. You need to understand the basics of search engine optimization. Incidentally, what the basics are to you may not be basics to others. Basics to some are the correct use of LSI (latent semantic indexing), of internal linking strategies and of other techniques designed to lead search engine spiders by the hand and convince them that their site is the tops. Can you do that?

If not, then here are one or two tips. Good SEO is a lot more than just having your page title in title tags and your heading in H1 tags. It is more that just having the correct keyword density â€“ do you know what that is? The vast majority of people donâ€™t have the slightest clue about keyword density or what it means. Formulae said to relate to keyword density and the number of words in the key phrase as a function of the number of times the phrase should appear in a web page are mediaeval in internet time.

Do you know what? Google doesnâ€™t give a toss about your calculations. Google cares about the service you are providing to Google customers and how relevant the content of your web page is to their needs. To find that out, Google applies a statistical mathematical equation based on statistical analysis of semantics as related to the specific keyword being used by the searcher, and the semantic content of your web page.

Google doesnâ€™t care if you have exactly 15 incidences of your keyword every 500 words â€“ in fact if you do, you have no chance because that is now excessive. Keyword stuffing or keyword spamming they call it! Yet people still write articles packed full of keywords in the mistaken belief that it will be good for them. Who is still telling them that?

So letâ€™s forget keyword density. Itâ€™s old SEO and no longer relates to Googleâ€™s needs. Internal linking: now thereâ€™s a new thing to most people, even though it has been relevant for the past few years. By intelligent use of internal linking you can lead your friendly neighbourhood spider down any web you can weave for it. And you will benefit greatly by doing so, if you know where you should be leading it.

Internal linking strategy is a different concept entirely to an external lining strategy involving one way or two way reciprocal links back to your web page from that of another website. Most people are involved in that, but also most donâ€™t know how to do it properly, and therefore lose out. Let me give you a simple example.

You have a website with a page rank of 4 for your home page. Note that it is not your whole site that gets a Google PageRank, as it is properly written, but each individual page in your site is individually ranked. When you come across a website with a PR of 4 or even 8, it is the page you are looking at that has that PageRank. That will generally be the home page, and when you agree to a reciprocal link, guess what! Your link will be placed on a â€˜links pageâ€™ in that site with a PR of zero. Thatâ€™s right, a Google PageRank of zilch: and thatâ€™s the benefit you will get. Zilch!

If you place their link on your home page, or any other page with a PR of greater than zero, you lose out. Even if your page has a Google PageRank of only 1, THEN YOU LOSE OUT!! They get a share of your PR of 1, and you get a share of their PR of zero!

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, and then tell me I donâ€™t know what I am talking about as many have. Some of these many are so-called internet gurus and SEO experts that fleece you by promising you a Google Page 1 position for your site, when they canâ€™t even get one for themselves.

If a site offers you a top 10 position, check out their position by using their URL. If they were so good, wouldnâ€™t they be in the top 10 for their URL? I would have though so! But NO.

So, do what you can to understand what Search Engine Optimization is. What it really is â€“ not what some would want you to believe what it is. Check out the source code of successful sites and compare it to the unsuccessful sites and try to spot differences. If you cannot, then it is the linking strategies that make the difference. Whatever strategy you use, however, make sure that you fully understand it and that you are using it as it should be used. There are links and links â€“ some better than others. Some can give you positive results, and some of your links can be very bad for you.

Do you know how to tell the difference? Most canâ€™t, and so are led by what they read online. The problem is that since â€˜most canâ€™tâ€™, most of what is written online is garbage. It is difficult to spot the truth from the opinion. It is truth that gets you a good Google or Yahoo listing, not opinion. The problem is that more people believe opinion than truth since they donâ€™t know what truth is, and most of what they read is false opinion.

The best advice you can have is to check out the websites that have succeeded and copy what they do. However, that is not as easy as you think since the off-site linking strategy that you cannot see is as important as the on-site SEO that you can see.

If you want screenshots of a website that succeeds, the check out Peteâ€™s site Article Services that varies from #1 and #4 on Google for the keyword â€˜article servicesâ€™, and then find the screenshots and explanation of how he does it on Improved Search Engine Rank. That is how to learn: from successful sites.

Important SEO Tips To Improve Your Webpage

2008-06-26T16:33:00.000-07:00

Webmasters have different choices for creating web page. Generally they avoid some important points while creating a web page to make it attractive or eye-catching to its users and in this way they create web page that are not search engine friendly and it becomes difficult for these pages to get index on the search engines. And if the pages are not search engine friendly and not indexed then no one can reach them to view or read and in this way creating a web page having good content becomes useless. In this article you can find some important tips which can help to improve your web-page to make it search engine friendly as well as user friendly to make it easily accessible to its users:

Improving Layout of webpage: Layout of a web page has an important role to continue a visitor on your web page as reading on a monitor screen is different from reading on a printed magazine. If layout of your webpage is not good there will be great chances that a visitor immediately leaves it, no matter how good is your content.
- Always make a good layout for each web page and put the most important information at the top of the webpage, so that the viewer can see it without scrolling.
- Distribute content into paragraphs that should not be more than 100 words.
- Use bullets, bars, tables, white spaces and margins etc. appropriately to make it readable.
Improving Size of Webpage: Size of a webpage is also important. It should not be too long as visitors do not like to scroll and also long pages take little more time to load in comparison to small pages.
- Always keep your pages under 32 K in order to make it load quickly. Loading time should not be more than 8-10 seconds.
- Avoid scrolling on your web pages but. If scrolling becomes important, Always add internal navigation for users to directly jump on the information the need.
Improving Navigation of Webpage: Navigation also plays an important role to make your web page user friendly. A good web page never complete without proper navigation tools.
- Navigation links should be easily accessible, clear and at the top of each webpage.
- Navigation structure should be same on each page of a website.
- If you have a complex website always add a search function to your webpage.
Improving fonts of a webpage: Fonts of webpage are also important to make web page user friendly. Having too little, too large or too complex font may become illegible on some browsers. So always be careful while using fonts on your webpage because if fonts are not proper visitor immediately move from the page.
- Always create webpage using default font of most browsers like Ariel, Times new roman, verdana etc.
- Always make headings or titles in bold and underline most important lines of your webpage.
- Avoid using unusual fonts unless they are in graphics and italics as plain text is more legible than italics.
- Do not use light text on dark background as it creates visibility problem in reading.
Improving Content of a webpage: Content is the king of a webpage and there is no substitute of good content. Content of a web page has more importance than any other factor to continue visitor on a particular page because content is the only thing that a visitor read.
- Content should be informative with some uniqueness.
- Avoid grammatical mistakes in content of your webpage. It should not have any spelling errors too.
- Using hyperlinks will be good idea to allow readers to pursue a topic in more detail.
- Content written in text should be scannable as some users prefer to scan text on internet.

Above tips will sure help you if you have already created a webpage that is not properly arranged and not getting visitors and also if you are new to this and going to create a web page.
Webexcel Solutions (ISO 9001:2000 Certified) A Software Development Company and an SEO Company
Author involve in research and analysis of various search engine strategies and alogrithms. For more articles by author please visit- Latest SEO Tips and Strategies .

What Every Search Engine Optimization Company Should Know about Keyphrase Choice

2008-06-26T16:31:00.000-07:00

Knowing the Prospect

There are many powerful and specific keyphrases available from which a search engine optimization company can choose to bring traffic to your site. But marketing on the Internet should go beyond traffic for the sake of traffic and instead focus on getting the right traffic. A search engine optimization company can target a phrase that is very popular, but 90 percent of those searching on it will not be true prospects. Or, the company can target a phrase that might be less popular in general but that is more likely to bring in the right types of prospects. Guess which is easier. Guess which is more effective.

For the best results when marketing on the Internet, you can segment your prospects in three ways:

By geographic region
By level of service desired
By place in the buying cycle

By Geographic Region

If your business only offers services in a particular part of the country, then you don't need to be marketing on the Internet with generic phrases that will bring in people who cannot take advantage of your company. A knowledgeable search engine optimization company will suggest specific phrases with geographic modifiers to bring in the traffic that will be most helpful for you.

For example, the keyphrase "real estate agent" may bring in a great deal of traffic, but if you are in Georgia and the searcher is looking for a home in California, this isn't helpful. Instead, your search engine optimization company would target "Atlanta real estate agent" and you would see true leads coming to your website.

By Level of Service Desired

Another way to target your keyphrases when marketing on the Internet is by the level of service desired by your customers. For this, your search engine optimization company will want to find out from you (or your sales department) what types of customers you attract.

For example, if you are an email marketer that offers high-level packages and when you are marketing on the Internet you use the phrase "email marketing," you will again be attracting a large amount of traffic that is not really interested in your services. Your search engine optimization company should instead be targeting a keyphrase like "premium email marketing," which may be less popular but will still bring in more leads than the generic phrase.

By Place in the Buying Cycle

Your search engine optimization company should be asking you what your goal is for marketing on the Internet. You may want to be the information source when someone is looking for your type of service, or you may instead want to be the destination when a prospect is ready to close the deal - or possibly a combination of both.

So if you are a real estate firm that is marketing on the Internet, you have two directions in which you can go. Your search engine optimization company can target phrases like "Atlanta real estate," which will bring in prospects that are early in the process and looking for general information about the area. In this case, you would want to make sure you have whitepapers and other informational pages available on your site.

You can also target a phrase like "Atlanta real estate agents," which is more likely to be searched on by someone who is ready to buy a home in the area. Those searchers will come to your site ready to close the deal. A good search engine optimization company will ask you the right questions before research even begins to find out which of these phrases would work better for your strategy, or to determine whether both types would give you benefits when marketing on the Internet.

Knowing the Company

In much the same way, marketing on the Internet should involve knowing the specific goals of your company. Your search engine optimization company can hone your keyphrases in three ways:

Those that bring in higher margin business
Those that boost underperforming business areas
Those that focus on new services

Those that bring in higher margin business

Your search engine optimization company can focus your marketing on the Internet toward products and services that bring in the highest margin. This is preferable to treating all of your products and services, and therefore all of your keyphrases, equally. For example, you may have two lines of business - one that nets 30 percent and one that nets 70 percent. If your keyphrases focus too heavily on the business that nets 30 percent, the overall effect will be a decrease in margins across the board. Conversely, focusing on the business that nets the larger percentage will bring you an increase.

Those that boost underperforming business areas

Your search engine optimization company can also find out from you which areas of your services or which products haven't gotten enough attention, and can focus on those. Your strategy of marketing on the Internet could then bring in fresh leads for those areas. For example, you may have a line of business that is underperforming, and it has been made known by the powers-that-be that this lagging area needs improvement. Your search engine optimization company should be aware of this issue, because it can allocate a sizable number of keyphrases to this underperforming sector. If you don't give your SEO firm this information, whether it asks or you volunteer, your keyphrases may be allocated equally, and you will lose the chance for this boost.

Those that focus on new services

If you let your search engine optimization company know about products or services you have in your pipeline, it can start searching for appropriate keyphrases early on. Then you can start getting traction ahead of time, rather than waiting until your product is already out to start your marketing on the Internet in that area. If your SEO firm asks you what is coming up for your business, let the company know about any initiatives up front.

Conclusion

When you target your prospects while marketing on the Internet, the benefits will become clear very quickly. And when you target specific areas of your business and do not treat all of your keyphrases equally, you will see the results in the places that matter most. Plus, you will save your sales department a great deal of time because they will no longer be tied up with bad leads from people finding your site for services you do not provide. Instead, the leads will already have been filtered and your sales people can close more deals.

(C) Medium Blue 2007

About the Author

Scott Buresh is the CEO of Medium Blue, which was recently named the number one search engine optimization company in the world by PromotionWorld. Scott has contributed content to many publications including Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004), MarketingProfs, ZDNet, WebProNews, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. Medium Blue serves local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Visit MediumBlue.com to request a custom SEO guarantee based on your goals and your data.

12 Tips To Optimize Your Membership Site For Search Engines

2008-06-26T16:29:00.000-07:00

1. Use unique content wherever possible

PLR and free reprints can be modified to look original to the search engines. To be classed as unique, the copy must be at least 30% different to any other webpage on the internet.
In addition to free reprints and PLR, it pays to also create content for your membership site from scratch. Outsource this task to a ghostwriter to save time.

2. Add new content regularly

To maintain a high page rank with the search engines, and a quality membership site, webmasters need to regularly add new content to their websites. A blog is a great way to add content to your site on a regular basis. Encouraging your members to comment on your blog may give you ideas for follow up blog posts, and will also increase your search engine ranking.

3. Choose the perfect keywords

Select specific keyword phrases that are relevant to the webpage you are optimizing rather than general terms. Although general terms draw more searches, there is a lot of competition for them and it will be difficult to get your page a high ranking.

Specific keyword phrases will get typed in less often, but you will get more targeted traffic and a higher page ranking for these phrases.

Look at what your competition is doing. Check out at least the top ten results for your keyword phrases on various search engines. Look at the source html codes and meta-tags on your competitors web pages to get some ideas.

4. Don't jam in the keywords but consider your keyword density

The optimal keyword density is unclear, but many recommend aiming for 3% and 7% to get the most traffic without being penalized by the search engines. Keep in mind that both search engines and your readers prefer quality content that flows over keyword stuffed articles.

5. Put them where they count - keyword prominence

Prominence refers to where you place your keyword phrases on your webpage. Search engines will put a higher value on keywords near the top of the page, so make sure your first paragraph is keyword optimized as well as all your Title and H1 tags.

6. Keep them together - keyword proximity

While you do not have to keep all the words in your keyword phrase together for search engine optimization, keeping them close together will add search engine value.

7. Don't forget to vary your keywords - LSI

In addition to keywords, search engines look for phrases that they expect to see relating to that keyword on the webpage. The presence of these phrases increases your search engine ranking.
LSI is designed to make sure keywords are used in context and that irrelevant content that is stuffed with keywords is penalized.

8. Dynamic Linking

To achieve a high search engine ranking it is important to get other sites to link to your membership site. These will be one way links, or reciprocal links, where you link to another site in return for them linking to you.

9. Don't make them stop to ask for directions.

Structure your site so it's easy to navigate. If a person can easily find their way, then the search engine spiders will also have an easier time getting around your web pages.

Make sure your membership site has a site map and that all major pages of your site are easily accessible from your members home page.

10. Captivate with attention grabbing headlines.

Use informative headlines throughout your webpage content, including your keyword phrases where appropriate.

11. Tag, you're it.

Include descriptive Alt tags on your graphics. These need to make sense and explain what the graphic is, but you'll want to also include your keywords if possible.

12. Tag, you're it again

Use descriptive title tags on all of your web pages to show what the page is about. Limit these to 59 characters. Add descriptive description tags to all web pages, and limited to 150 characters.

Jeremy Gislason is a leading expert on membership sites, marketing and online business. Do you want to market and sell all of your products faster? Free how to business and marketing courses at: http://www.MembershipMillionaire.com

Link Baiting Articles: How Should They Be Written

2008-06-26T16:28:00.000-07:00

In today's realm of online information-gathering and dissemination, many observers say that the best way of obtaining quality inbound links is through generating a lot of high-value content that people would like to link to.

You gather inbound links when other online publishers and Web masters link to your website, or one of your pages. The larger the number of links that you can get, the better it would be for your web site and the better you are likely to rank in the search engine rankings. Inbound links may create wonders for your page, as not only will they get you targeted traffic from the Web sites linking to you, as even search engines attach higher importance to websites that are being linked to by other websites. This serves as sort of a vote of confidence for your content. The process of generating content for the sake of getting inbound links is generally referred to "linkbaiting". Linkbaiting Is A Relatively New Concept in Obtaining Inbound Links As mentioned earlier, linkbaiting is the method of generating content for the purpose of getting inbound links. However, does this method mean that you generate content just to obtain inbound links? Actually everything works in tandem and although linkbaiting is a relatively new term, the concept has been present for more than a decade, although it initially existed in a crooked form. In the same manner as link-exchange programs, it was the same thing but back then, where they used to exchange links indiscriminately. Unlike before, nobody was worried about the link value provided, just so long as a reciprocal link was gained, so people welcomed almost every sort of link. As the initial system created havoc online, search engines eventually began to stop ignoring link exchange activities and considered only those links that were linked to high-value content. This created the need for unique link-worthy content. The quality of content not only adds value to your Web site and enhance your conversion rate, it also encourages the others to link to your web pages. This linking, which originated out of the value of your content, in effect will greatly improve your search engine rankings. The Different Types Of Linkbaiting Link baiting is basically considered as building links with a twist. Rather than go hunting out links, you in the process, are bringing the links to you through unique and popular site content. In simple terms, experts con sider link Baiting is just like fishing. As you publish a new page on a topic and release it on the web, you are hopeful that others pick up on the content and see it as fresh and interesting, and link to it. The article is the bait, and the link is the catch. A creatively written and interesting Web page can capture huge links on its own with little to no effort from you. Here are the different linkbaiting types that writers and Web masters employ to generating good links. - News Hook. A news hook is where you provide content that others donÃ¯Â¿Â½t have, but will want to link to. A specific example of a news hook is a "scoop" where you are the first, or one of the first, to report on some information of general or industry news. - Attack Hook. This type of hook works much like a contrary hook, however takes things to a newer level. In this hook, you not only present a contrary point of view, but you also turn it into a personal attack on the original source. - Contrary hook. This is employed when you contradict or counter something someone else says. Usually, you will start with a link back to the original story, which would be their link bait, and then present your contrary viewpoints. - Humor Hook. A humor hook involves using humor to attract links. The humor can be in the form of a story, or it can also be a piece of satire or a list of funny items. - Resource Hook. This hook provides useful information for others to link to. It can be a list of resources, a compilation of links to articles. Your resource can be a how to or tutorial based on your industry. Link bait refers to the unique and interesting content that other sites naturally want to link to. The kind of link bait can be something original, or it may be one that is original in idea, something that is contrary, one that is humorous, or something that is useful. Vanessa Arellano Doctor
Search Engine Optimization SEO Company

SEO and LSI: How to Use Latent Semantic Indexing

2008-06-26T16:27:00.000-07:00

People get worried when they hear about terms such as SEO and LSI, and when they try to find out how to use latent semantic indexing, they get even more worried when they get conflicting messages. On the one hand some say that LSI doesnâ€™t exist and therefore canâ€™t be used, while others, on the other hand, state that it is critical to your websiteâ€™s success with the search engines.

We all know what computer people are like, the way they try to make acronyms of everything. LSI is one of these, although not quite what you would call an acronym. LSI does exist, but not in the form that Google would have us believe, and not in any form that you can use to make your website â€™LSI compliantâ€™. Anybody claiming that they can do that are simply playing Googleâ€™s trick and using big names for what is a very simple thing to do.

LSI or LSA?

Without going into any detail as to the mathematical background of LSA, it can be used, and is used, to determine the relevance of a passage of text to any given topic based upon a keyword or multiple word search term. LSA was, incidentally, patented by a group of people in 1988, although the basics were known prior to this. LSI is nothing more than the use of LSA in the indexing and retrieval of information. It is therefore a concept, and you cannot make a â€˜concept compliantâ€™ web page.

However, it is all semantics (ha-ha!) and the meat of this article is not to knock holes in the way the terms LSA and LSI are being wrongly used by SEO experts, but inform as to how you can make your web page more likely to be considered relevant to the main keyword for which you want your page indexed. This is very simple and does not warrant all the books now being offered on the subject.

The Development of Adsense

Latent semantic analysis is used by Google primarily to detect spam, in respect of excessive repetition of keywords in order to fool the search engines into providing a high listing for that keyword. There was a time when smart people could indeed achieve this simply by writing a meaningless template with rotating synonyms into which any keyword could be multiply inserted by means of software. Thousands of pages could be generated in minutes, each targeting a different keyword. Some were making $thousands daily from Adsense using this method.

In fact the principles of LSA to determine the content of web pages were used by a small company called Oingo that changed its name to Applied Semantics who developed a search system to determine the relevance of page content for specific advert placement. They called this Adsense. This company was in turn bought by Google in April, 2003, and Adsense used to replace their own system which was still under development. Adsense, then, was not developed by Google, but purchased by them.

BigDaddy and Character String Analysis

The principles were also applied to determine the relevance of on-page text to specific search terms and used in the web indexing algorithm called BigBaddy, used by the Googlebot to index your web pages. BigDaddy appears to view links and relevance as the two major factors among many others that determine your listing position in the index for any specific search term as used by a Google customer.

Back to spam. Your web page content is now analyzed by the statistical mathematical analysis tool known as LSA/LSI and indexed according to the meaning of the words in your text. It goes further than just checking for the excessive use of specific words, and no longer searches only for indices of your stated keywords. LSA informs Google of the true meaning of your text, and you cannot hide this by repetitions of a single key phrase. Letâ€™s call it LSI because thatâ€™s what Google calls it. LSI analyzes the character strings in your text and compares them to a large database of words, the meanings of which have been defined.

Same Words â€“ Different Meanings

LSI is used to determine the true meaning of homonyms, heteronyms and polysemes. Homonyms are spelled and pronounced the same, but have different meanings, such as lock, with three meanings. A heteronym is a word spelled the same as another, but with a different pronunciation and meaning, such as lead: a metal or to be in front. Polysemes are words spelled the same, and from the same root, but used differently such as a mole â€“ a burrowing animal, or a mole â€“ a spy deliberately placed in an organization. Both moles have the same root, but the words are used in different contexts. LSI or LSA can be used to determine the difference by means of analysis of the other words in the text.

If your page has been written around the keyword lock (my usual example of a homonym), without any decent content the reader would find it difficult to tell what type of locks you were writing about. The LSA algorithm would be looking for words such as canals, keys or hair to tell the difference and know where to list it.

All you need do is to look up thesaurus.com, and then use plenty of alternative vocabulary in your content that explains its meaning precisely. You can also use the tilde (~) in a Google search for your keyword. While Google does not highlight exactly correct synonyms, it will give you an indication of what vocabulary it regards as being equivalent. If you do that with â€˜locksâ€™ all you get are â€˜lockâ€™ and â€˜locksâ€™, and all are security locks. Interestingly, when you do it with â€˜canal locksâ€™, Google also highlight â€˜narrowâ€™. This indicates that if your topic is on canal locks, using the word â€˜narrowâ€™ will be to your advantage.

Semantics and Vocabulary

If you keep in mind that the main purpose of the LSI component of BigDaddy is to detect keyword spamming, and to determine for what search term the page should be indexed, then it should be obvious to you that the sue of contextually related vocabulary will reveal the semantics of your page. Semantics is nothing more than the meaning of the words you are using, and where your keywords could have more than one meaning, you have to make the meaning clear through the use of related text. Nothing more than that.

If you write naturally, as you would if you were talking to somebody, and trying to explain your subject, then you will not have any problems with the LSI algorithm. There is no need to use an SEO expert, since they are not necessarily qualified in their knowledge and use of language. A thesaurus will do the job fine.

Keyword Density is not What it Was

Do not overuse your keywords, and the old adage that you should have between 1% and 3% keyword density on your page no longer applies. Use it often enough to stress its importance, which means as the page title, as the heading in H1 tags, and in the first 100 characters and in the last paragraph. Google will check all four of these, and will regard any words it finds there, other than fillers and stop words, as being important. Use it again every 300 words or so and that is enough.

SEO and LSI are not really related since the term LSI is used in the wrong context here. However, in the way that it is used, if you use good vocabulary, contextually relevant to your keywords, then you will also be using good SEO. How to use latent semantic indexing properly is irrelevant in pure terminology, since you canâ€™t use it on your web page. Google can use it in their algorithm, and you should make your vocabulary as understandable as possible by means of simple words that express the meaning of your text.

Pete has his own theories of the way that SEO and LSA can be used to improve your web page listing positions, and more information is available on his website SEOcious and his blog SEOscopy where you will find how to use these concepts to their maximum effect.

Search Engine Optimization is a Continuous Process

2008-06-26T16:25:00.000-07:00

Many of us must have heard the saying 'Plan your work and work your plan', and that the one who actually believes and works on it succeeds in the rat race of proving his or her worth. This certainly stands true for the corporate world which is continuously upgrading itself with the latest technology and where every organization faces new competition in every aspect of the business world. Marketing is an integral part of all these aspects. No business enterprise can survive without marketing and promotion of its products and services. The main reason for this promotion is the fact that 'out of sight is out of mind'. This is why, it is essential to maintain the visibility of the business enterprise in the eyes of the potential customers.

With the Internet coming up with new conveniences and benefits, both for customers and for business enterprises, it has become a perfect marketplace in the present-day scenario. Along with many benefits such as the potential to find customers worldwide, it also has many drawbacks to it. The challenge involved in online marketing is to combat the competitors from all over the world. The internet has meant that restrictions of geographical boundaries do not hold true anymore. This is where the visibility of the website comes into question. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process that rates the website based on various factors and delineates their rankings. Business organizations therefore have to recognize these factors that affect their rankings with search engines and make the required amendments in their websites accordingly. Once a website has achieved a higher ranking, one can say that the business organization is almost halfway through on the path of success. We can say that diverting traffic to a website by way of higher SEO ranking via search engine optimization is a key to reaching the zenith of success.

The better your research, the more improved your website's ranking. The main aim of search engines is to satisfy Internet users by providing them the exact information that they were looking for. They want content that is not only relevant, but also upgraded according to the latest developments. This is the reason why search engine optimization is also known to be an ongoing process. That is to say, providing the relevant information and achieving a higher ranking once is not enough. The website has to be continuously updated to maintain that high position with the search engines.

The content of the website holds the most important position when it comes to improving search engine rankings. 'Content is king' is a phrase that each one of us, who is acquainted with the workings of SEO, must have heard. This is primarily because this is the basic requirement of the user. The content should always be relevant and easily comprehensible. Plagiarized content is not required at all. Ensure that you do not stray from the topic or repeat points. The keywords that will be used should fit in well with the flow of the text. Enlighten Internet users with your knowledge and impress them with your interesting writing style and do not bother about the consequences after that. It is necessary to make the content rich in keywords. Though one should also be cautious not to exceed the ideal keyword density, otherwise it may draw the suspicion of spam towards the site and may lead to the site being banned.

There is a need to conduct constant and extensive research to find the keywords that potential users are expected to submit in the search engines. The keywords chosen should be such that it best describes the crux of the entire website. Also, the keywords selected should draw fewer competitive website results, but it should not be so unique that a general user would not even think of that keyword while searching. Technically speaking, it is advisable to go for keywords that draw less than 5000 competitive websites, but is searched at an average of 1000 times per month. Do not forget to incorporate the selected keyword in the header tag, keyword tag, title and in the description tag, including a few times in the actual content of the website.

Apart from the content and keywords, there are some other factors that greatly influence the rankings of a website on the search engines. Interlinking is a method of promotion that mentions the link of your website to the visitors of another site that has the same theme, and vice versa. This could be a reference link for the users of that website. Uploading numerous articles related to the theme of the website is another standard component included in SEO strategies to enhance the rankings with search engines. These articles can also be submitted with famous article directories that will drive more traffic to the site as the hyperlink of the website can be mentioned in the resource box at the end of the article. At times, the site map of a website can also be of great help in achieving a higher ranking. As the site map lists all the content mentioned on the website, when the SEOs trace the required keyword on the sitemap, they simply index it with the search engines. This enhances the ranking of the website.

However, there are many SEO consultants who claim to provide top rankings with search engines within a few days and they undoubtedly, prove themselves right in claiming that. But, one should remain alert not to be carried away by such claims as there are two techniques of SEO that gives higher rankings - white hat and the black hat SEO technique. While white hat makes use of ethical techniques, black hat employs unfair strategies to achieve the top position with the search engines in a matter of a few days. The latter technique is the one that is also employed by SEO consultants who claim a quick higher SEO ranking. For long term benefit, one should always look forward to white hat techniques to avoid any inconveniences such as spamming and other related things. Hence, we can say that SEO serves a two way purpose by providing the user with the required information, and business organizations their soaring profits.

Picking An SEO-friendly Web Designer

2008-06-26T16:24:00.000-07:00

As an SEO we get two kinds of sites; those that were designed in the past and where the designer is no longer involved, and the sites where the design is either ongoing or we are working with the web designers from the start. Both of these have their pros and cons as an SEO but there is a clear advantage of one over the other for the client.

First, let's discuss the pros and cons to the SEO. If we are coming in after the design is completed there are more than likely (and by that I mean 99.9% likely) some structural and or major design issues that will need to be addressed. Unless the web designer is skilled in SE-friendly design we are going to have our work cut out for us just dealing with structural issues. On the positive side of this scenario, we're left to just work on the site with no designer taking it personally when we tell them we need to make changes (and that can lead to some issues).

Now let's look at the other scenario. Working with a designer has it's cons which is generally – we're going to have a designer taking it personally when we need changes made to the structure of a site or challenging us when we're arguing that while an all-Flash site is visually appealing, it leaves something to be desired from and SEO standpoint. This conversation generally goes something like this (and all you SEO's out there can sing along):

SEO – Flash cannot be properly read in the same way as HTML and we need to have easily spidered content for the search engines to see.

Designer – Flash can be read by Google.

SEO – But not in the same way. We need multiple pages of optimized content and Flash just isn't going to provide that.

Designer – Well I disagree (probably read in some forum somewhere that a misc. guy had no problem ranking for “bob wyverniuschuck artist” with a Flash site) but even if that's true – it's the conversion that counts and this Flash site is going to convert.

SEO – Yes we understand that conversions are important but so is traffic. If we can't get traffic to the site then a 100% conversion ratio is irrelevant.

Designer – There are other ways to get traffic.

SEO - Yes I understand that but this is what the client has hired us to do and has asked that we work together to build an attractive site that ranks well.

Designer – I'm going to have to talk to them about this ...

SEO -

So this is the down side and an extreme example of it (for humor as much as illustration). But there's a big upside and that comes when you have the opportunity to work with web designers who know how important SEO is (as an SEO who knows how important a good design is). Working to balance the two can be a daunting task and having the skills of the SEO matched with the skills of the web designer can be a true blessing. For example, I may have a great idea to make a site more easily navigated by search engines but an ugly solution to implement it whereas the designer may have a more attractive solution in mind if they know the problem and the technical solution.

Such a scenario has recently come about in our dealings with Moonrise Design. Moonrise contacted us in advance of their starting work for a client, had us sit in on conference calls to understand the client's needs and has since had us helping structure the site properly from the ground up. There is no resistance and we don't tell them what to do, we indicate the functions required – provide any technical background as necessary – and they implement it in a way that leaves the site FAR more attractive than if we had had to do it ourselves. Expert designers doing what they do best and understanding that what we do is SEO and the client wants to rank highly. Ah, it's a beautiful thing.

It is this experience and reflecting back on other web designers we've worked smoothly with in the past that inspired me to write this article. The article is more for potential clients of designers than for the designers themselves. So for those looking for a designer – if you want your site to rank highly and/or you'll be hiring an SEO – here's what to look for.

Picking A Web Designer

There are two main considerations that you'll need to make when you're picking your web designer. The first is, can they build an attractive site and the second is can they build a search engine friendly site?

Building an attractive site:

I am probably the last person to ask about what's attractive and what's not. When the Beanstalk site was up for a redesign a couple years ago I hired a professional web design company to build it. I can't create pretty things but I know how to test and I know how to monitor statistics to see if the traffic is behaving as I would hope.

Here's what to look at:

When you're choosing a designer take a look at their portfolio – put some of their designs past people in your target demographic and see what they think. It's also wise to view the sites of the leaders in your industry to see what they're doing (and maybe even who designed their sites). Just because you like something doesn't mean it's effective to your target market.

You also need to know if your designer is skilled at conversion optimization. Have they read such works as Enquiro's eye tracking studies. Have they done their research (or have you) regarding which colors make people act in which ways? These are extremely important issues to be aware of. If you look at the eye tracking studies - the Beanstalk site places our logo, the Hacker Safe logo and main title in the key zones. We also went with green giving a natural (easy on the eyes) feel that implies wealth and is strongly associated with money. When we changed to our current design the effects were immediately detectable in how our visitors behaved visiting more pages for longer periods of time and, most importantly, increasing our communication with us significantly.

If your designer is not aware of these things do not despair, they may be a fine designer indeed and may have this understanding intuitively (though a little research to back up any intuition is always a sound policy). That said, be aware of the information that is out there and ask questions when you're asked to approve designs.

Building a search engine friendly site:

This is crucially important but probably one of the areas we have to address most frequently. I can't possibly get into all the various areas of search engine friendly design so I'll simply list off a couple of the most common issue we encounter and then provide references to other reading.

Enormous amounts of code on the page. For some reason, even some new designs are coming to us as though they were out of 1998 as far as the page code is concerned. All skilled web designers should have a solid grasp of CSS and should be putting all the main formatting into this file(s). Way too often we're getting sites with dozens of font tags, color tags, size tags, etc. etc. etc. This just gives the search engines a lot more to dig through to find what they want – the content. I'm not even going to get into tables as that opens a whole other can of worms. If your site is table-based (your designer or SEO will be able to tell you this if you don't know) there are some basic practices to insure that the code these tables add is minimized. Unfortunately I can't get into the myriad of different situations this can entail and will have to save it for a future article (so be sure to bookmark our SEO blog to keep up-to-date on that and other developments in the industry).

Bad internal links. You want your internal pages to rank. Most sites will generally target the highest priority phrases on the homepage of the site but the internal pages are the ones that will rank for specific products, services and long tail phrases. To maximize the rankability of the internal pages you need them to be easily found by the spiders and you need to associate these pages with the keywords you're targeting. In short, you need to link to them with text and you need that text to include the keywords. This isn't some deep, dark mystery of SEO and has been well documented and commented on but we've seen tons of instances where internal links are image only or worse, an unspiderable script-based navigation system.

If your designer is using image or script-based navigation for aesthetic reasons that's fine. In fact, it'll likely leave you with a more appealing site visually however you need to make sure your key pages are linked to in the content of you homepage or from text in the footer to insure they get found and spidered quickly and easily.

Over-optimized pages. I love seeing websites that were developed by a web designer who “knows SEO” and has stuffed so many keywords and header tags into the pages that it reads more like an eye chart than sales copy. I can't list all the abuses that exist out there but here's a quick sample of what your page shouldn't read like (and I'll use digital cameras as the example again):

Digital Cameras

Digital cameras are very useful. When you need digital cameras to take digital pictures you'll want to look for our cameras first. Our digital cameras are the best digital cameras you can buy online. So when you want to buy digital cameras online be sure to visit our store and buy digital cameras online from us at the lowest prices.

Can you see what's wrong there? Well so can the search engines. Your pages should read like your writing for a visitor and not a search engine. Yes you need to make sure your keywords get in there (which should be easy since that's what the searchers is looking for information on) but you're not looking to cram them in with a density of 30%. If you can get a density of around 3% and kept the content easily read by your human visitors then you've done well.

I mentioned that I couldn't possibly list all the horrendous issues we've encountered from designers in the past but I also promised to list some other resources you can visit for additional information. Here they are:

Great article by Sheri Thurow on the Clickz site titled, “Top Five SEO Design Mistakes
A top 10 list on the Webconfs site, “Top 10 SEO Mistakes
Another top 10 list – this time by Eric Enge on the Search Engine Watch site titled, “The 10 Most Common SEO Mistakes

If you see your web designer doing one or all of these then know in advance, you or your SEO is going to have some major hurdles to jump through.

Dave Davies is the CEO of Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning. Beanstalk offers SEO, consulting, training, copywriting and link building services to clients from around the world. We would like to thank Moonrise design, a San Francisco web design company, for allowing us to use our experiences with them as an example. Be sure to visit our SEO articles archives for more information on SEO and web design best practices.

Choosing Page Names For Your Web Site

2008-06-26T16:23:00.000-07:00

In this article I would like to comment how to choose web site page names to achieve best possible visitor's experience and search engine ranking.

Firstly one needs to understand the difference between static and dynamic URLs.

Dynamic Pages

Dynamic website page names are used to send variables to a script file in order to perform a task that usually generates dynamic results. Dynamic URLs always contain question mark that separates file name from sent variables. Example name "do.php?a=1&b=2" would pass variable a=2 and b=2 to "do.php" script file that generates some response.

Such technology is very useful for web designers but it down performs in search engine listings. Search engines prefer static URLs that are less likely to change over time.

Static Pages

To explain static page naming we are going to use two example URLs: "about.htm" and "about.php".

Classic example of a static page name consists of name and extension. Page name extension indicates technology ("htm" says that page uses HTML technology) or a programming language ("php" extension indicates that page was generated using PHP server side scripting) used.

Many consider that pages with extension other than "htm" or "html" are worth more than those with server side scripting language indicators (like PHP, ASP and others).

If you will try to search for "search engine optimization" in Google and look at domain names of first 20 web sites, you will notice that URLs with many extensions are present. This indicates that search engines don't really care about extension as long as the page represents useful information for the visitor.

Friendly URLs

Friendly URLs are static page names with no extension at all. Friendly page names are very useful to the user as they are easy to remember (E.g. help, shop, contact …). Page name extension that refers to scripting language/technology used in the page. Extension-less construction protects page names from becoming obsolete if different web technology is going to be used to generate / present them in the future. Such names can be achieved only using URL rewriting technology.

URL rewriting

Rewrite engine is a special service on the server that modifies URLs before they are processed by scripting language. It is used to convert dynamic page names to static ones:

Dynamic page:

index.php?page=news&item=34

Can be changed to static page:

news/34.html

Or simply

news/34

Rewrite engine is very helpful to maintain static page names for complex database driven websites, where parameters have to be sent to generate results. Dynamic pages are usually not cached by web browsers so by using rewrite technology to generate static pages one increases overall web site performance.

Apache web servers have built in component called "mod_rewrite" which allows setting up rewrite engine by uploading RegExp (Regular Expression) commands to ".htaccess" file. For those who use Windows IIS web servers - Free IconicIsapiRewrite plug-in can be installed to achieve URL rewriting.

Linas Bari is designer and developer at Smooth Step studio that offers web design in Marbella. Visit our web site for more information about web site development, content management and search engine marketing.

Google's common sense killed the SEO guruï¿½ We were stumped

2008-06-26T16:21:00.000-07:00

For the past few years, everyone has been wondering why their Google rankings have collapsed, because as far as they knew they were some of the best at optimizing web pages (and that was often times correct).

I know for a fact what has happened and why it is so much harder to succeed on Google now days, and I can almost guarantee some of the things that were said at Google. I bet several executives and employees of Google said "How can we make sure that all the web sites appearing in our results are valuable resources"ï¿½. Which makes complete sense because without valuable results in their search engines; they lose their stance as the best search engine on the internet. I also bet someone came up with a simple, yet, extremely bright idea and said something like this "Why donï¿½t we just change the algorithm so that it takes true hard work; or true popularity for people to get to the top of our search engine"ï¿½, or something of that nature.

In essence Google saw blasted all over every Search Engine Optimization Blog world a new fad called link building; and that people were exchanging links left and right, which in all reality was creating illegitimate links (because there was no genuine interest in the web site thru this link to begin with). So I can only (once more) assume they talked to one another and said, "We should give very little value to links where web sites exchanged links in both directions".

Then another issue that had to arise during this algorithm change was Google needed to make sure they could not be thwarted by all SEO gurus, and they did something else to help perpetuate that. In order for your hundreds of links you obtain to be most effective, your links must have unique hypertext or surrounding text to have high quality value. For example, if someone had the exact same link to their web site posted on 1,000 web sites saying "click here for quality dog food"; This would easily alert Google that this site does not have actual quality inbound links, and that someone either manually or automatically posted the same link to every related site they could find. Common sense of most every webmaster would tell them to post the a link over and over to as many place related web sites, but many didnï¿½t consider the need for unique hypertext and descriptions to the web site. Therefore; once again, I can assume that Google decided the more unique the hypertext wording; the higher the chance that the link is authentic.

Another issue that arises is that many webmasters will create a web site that does not have any content change at all. You can have tons of great links, but I am positive that Google admires sites with fresh content. You need to update your site every few months (at least) and tweak some things regularly; you should also always add new fresh content.

Others have also realized that Google does value web sites that have been on the internet for extended periods of time. So if you are starting a new web site you need to be able to trench down for a long fight, however the rewards are great to the person that doesn't falter and is persistent until the end.

Google isnï¿½t prejudice, if you had as many unique links to your web site as yahoo.com Google would value you as an equal resource. Know that you are just another search optimizer against hundreds of thousands of others. How will you set yourself apart?

So to recap, Google decided that they needed to make sure that your web site is legitimately linked to. Unfortunately there are only a few ways to do that, and guarantee it withstands the tests of time. Here are some of my own personal ideas:

It comes down to the simple fact that now days in order to make sure you secure a long lasting high search engine ranking, you have to actually create content that markets itself. Also you must create enough interest in your web site that people are willing to take enough time to link to you without expecting a link back. All that said, here are my ideas that will help you to gain long lasting valuable links to your web site which will help make sure your long term search optimization goals are worth while.

Letï¿½s start by getting our web site listed in to directories related to your topic; however don't use the same title and description for each posting ï¿½ constantly switch it up. Something I do personally in my spare time to help my site is go on other peoples blog's talking about a subject that your web site is similar to and write genuine posts with your link attached. Don't just flood their web site with links, you won't get far and your posts will not be accepted. Publishing of articles online is great; be creative ï¿½ that is what will set you apart. You can also host or sponsor events that will be talked about online. Offer incentives for people in your field to link to you, freebies, services, etc.

I tell you the absolute truth, whoever has a good work ethic and more creative bone in their body will succeed. This is because you will always have to find ways to create a constant flow of links to your web site without trying to manipulate a search engines perspective.
Hard work is the easiest way to beat everyone else. Here is a quote I love from an unknown author: Some People Dream Of Success While Others Wake Up And Work Hard At It.

Joel McLaughlin
http://www.dataflurry.com

Dynamic websites in SEO services

2008-06-26T16:18:00.000-07:00

Dynamic websites are those sites where pages are generally built using a programming language like asp, php and java. Dynamic websites are often data driven that indicates that website content is stored in a database and content from this database is accessed through dynamic code.

Dynamic websites are difficult to get indexed in major search engines. This requires professional optimization. Most search engines claim to index the majority of dynamic websites. Most of the search engines claim for indexing majority of websites but the fact is that it is limited to a small number of urls.

Then how to optimize a dynamic website in seo services so that it gets indexed by major search engines. There are various methods for this.

First is to use URL rewriting tools or softwares o convert dynamic URL to static URL. These tools are available on the web. Changing a dynamic URL to static help in getting your website easily indexed by the search engines.

Second is the use of CGI or PERL scripts to get your dynamic nature websites indexed by the search engines. This is considered as an easy method as you need to write a simple script to convert a dynamic URL to a static one.

Third method is to manage web servers. In case of apache server there is rewrite module that enables you to turn the url that contain query strings into those urls that search engines can easily index. This module is not installed with apache software by default. So it needs to be checked with your web hosting company for installation. In case of cold fusion it is necessary to configure cold fusion on your server so that ï¿½?ï¿½ is replaced by ï¿½/ï¿½ and passed the value to the URL.

Another method in seo services is creating a static page that links to an array of dynamic web pages. This is very effective when you own a small online store. When a static page is created linking to all the dynamic web pages then optimize this static page for search engine rankings.

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 and SEO Services India visit http://www.nddw.com

Important Factors You Must Know About SEO

2008-06-26T16:17:00.000-07:00

Anyone who has an online business may be quick to jump into several SEO techniques, thinking that these will be a quick opportunity for internet success. If you think however that SEO can be accomplished in a jiffy, you’re bound to be disappointed. There are important factors you must know about search engine optimization. This includes the things to avoid, the things needed to generate a higher page rank, and finally the elements present in most excellent SEO services.

First of all, overloading your site with keywords is not always a smart thing to do. Sure, you want to communicate your offering or your service as much as you can, and to drive the targeted traffic back to your site. Who would not want that? However, too many keywords may end up overwhelming your market. Oftentimes, it is not always about keywords but the strategic placement of the keywords as well.

Filling your site with second-rate, plagiarized content is another way to sabotage the performance of your efforts. People are quick to recognize clichÃ©s and formulaic phrases, and if they don’t get anything fresh and useful from the website content, they will have to look for them from the next site, or the competition.

Link farming is another SEO technique that always ends up being abused. This involves a group of websites utilizing hyperlinks on their pages, all pointing back to every other site page within the group, with the goal of engendering more traffic and increased rankings in search engines. While these may work in the beginning, the long-term consequences of this strategy will be anything but beneficial for the websites.

Don’t fret, however because there are many ways with which you can increase your ranking consistently and effectively. If you have an easily navigable site that’s filled with high quality content, you are certain to attract a loyal following from your targeted visitors.

A website that is too complicated for the average internet user will limit its reach and will be able to provide for a specific niche only. As much as possible, maintain a website that has navigation-friendly features and one that people can easily maneuver. In the same manner, if the site contains relevant and well-researched content, visitors are bound to stick around a bit longer.

You can also submit high quality articles to article submission sites, so as to generate increased traffic. Well-written articles have higher chances of being accepted in these submission sites. Once you are able to provide excellent information to the readers through the articles, they will be more inclined to click on the link to your website provided at the bottom of each article.

If you want to achieve higher rankings of your web pages, you can avail of the services of excellent SEO service providers. It is always encouraged to go for one that guarantees high rankings for your site and one that has a comprehensive list of available services. Not all SEO services command high prices, so make sure that you are getting what you actually paid for.

Finally, a good SEO services company provides round-the-clock support to their clients. This is one of the important factors you must know about search engine optimization. Not all search engine optimization companies are created equal, so look for one that provides you with what need.

How to get back into Google

2008-06-18T15:12:00.000-07:00

Visiting this old link I used to reccommend http://www.google.com/support/bin/request.py shows no option for “I’m a webmaster inquiring about my website” any longer which allowed you to request reinstation.

However, logging in to Google Sitemaps now shows a direct link at the bottom of your main account page to “Submit a reinclusuion request” which takes you here - https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/reinclusion?hl=en

This means you will have to register your site to do.

From there you get to check boxes that let you admit guilt, acknowledge modification, agree not to do it again, and even a box to explain yourself.

You don't have to contact Google but it can't hurt. They will eventually spider your site again and see that you have cleaned up your website. You may have to wait a few months for Google to re-index your site so be patient and don't tinker with your website too much unless dictated by your site's products or content needs.

The worst case scenario is to start a new site. Sometimes this can be necessary but only in the most extreme cases.

Code swapping

2008-06-18T15:10:00.000-07:00

Optimizing a page for top ranking, then swapping another page in its place once a top ranking is achieved.

What does Google say?

"Don't deceive your users, or present different content to search engines than you display to users," Google says, and they list some bullet points on avoiding being banned.

Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
Don't send automated queries to Google.
Don't load pages with irrelevant words.
Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

Google also states:

"Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, 'Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?'"

While creating a page without a thought to search engines is probably going a little too far, optimizing your site for an organic search, as long as it conforms to their standards, is perfectly acceptable.

Linking to Bad Neighborhoods

2008-06-18T15:09:00.000-07:00

Link campaigns are good thing when done correctly; we would say they are a necessity in today's SEO world. But linking to bad neighborhoods are a sure way to lose your rank in Google. If you aren't careful about who you are linking to you can easily disappear overnight. Basically, while you may be ethical and do everything right linking to someone who isn't can be considered guilt by association. Always verify your links to other sites. Make sure they have page rank in Google and are indexed by Google. Try searching for their URL to see if they are indexed. Avoid linking to any sites that use spamming techniques to increase their search engine rankings. Regularly checking outbound links from your site and removing any offenders is a good idea.

A few site types to avoid:

Free-for-all link farms
Adult sites
Gambling sites

Buying Links

2008-06-18T15:08:00.000-07:00

While buying links may not get you banned, they can certainly hurt your page rank. Google has slowly been catching on to this fad and has measures in place to put your site in limbo for 6-8 months (known as the "sandbox effect") so you can't instantly benefit from buying links to your website. Many sites that sell links are being devalued by Google, making an investment in this strategy a waste of money and time. Ultimately, stay away from buying links to increase your ranking.

Redirect Pages

2008-06-18T15:07:00.000-07:00

Sneaky redirection pages are set up in groups from 5 to hundreds. They all target similar and related keywords or phrases. Usually, the only links on these pages are links to other pages in the same family creating a false sense of related linking.

These pages don't necessarily contain content that any human would be interested in. These pages may show up high in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS), but when you click on one of these pages from the SERPS, you will be redirected to another page. In other words, the page you click to see is not the page you actually get to read.

The redirect can be automatic, done with a meta refresh command or through other means such as a the mouse moving while on the redirect page.

Doorway Pages

2008-06-18T15:06:00.000-07:00

Defining a doorway page can be difficult so here is our definition that could potentially ban your site in Google: pages that are created in order to attract search engine spiders and be ranked highly for their targeted keywords. Real visitors find this page and then continue to the "real" website from there. Hence the name "doorway page". These pages aren't in the navigation most of the time. If you come across a page where much of the information is duplicated from other pages on the site but it is different in terms of keywords only, this is most likely a doorway page.

As you can see this can be a gray area. Some pages on a website may focus on a particular subject and be innocent of trying to lure search engine spiders only for high rankings. Err on the side of caution and make sure the page is useful and part of the your site's navigation.

Keyword Spam and Keyword Stuffing

2008-06-18T15:05:00.000-07:00

Ever seen a web page with a very awkwardly written first paragraph where a certain word is repeated ad nauseam? Here's an example:

"We sell the best father's day gifts for father's day. If you like to celebrate father's day we can help with the best father's day gifts for father's day."

Care to guess which keywords are being targeted? This is keyword spamming or stuffing but it is just the tip of the SEO iceberg. This is just the content on the page, there is probably keyword stuffing happening in the code: in the meta tags, invisible text, alt tags, title tags and comment tags. etc. If the word or phrase is repeated too often Google can place a filter to reduce the site's rankings or simply ban the site. Keyword density can be tricky but, as a general rule, Big Oak shoots for 1% to 5% of all text on a page to be our targeted keywords. Ultimately you must write for the reader not the search engine. Be sure the keywords flow naturally.

Hidden Text and or Links

2008-06-18T15:04:00.000-07:00

How can text been hidden? Well, there are a variety of ways - some are more sneaky than others. But is boils down to this: it is considered hidden if the text or link is invisible to the website visitor but can be seen by search engine spiders. This used to be done quite often, such as making your text white on a white background or using cascading style sheets (CSS) to hide your text, but search engines can easily spot this today so it is best to avoid it altogether.

Duplicate Content or Websites

2008-06-18T14:57:00.000-07:00

If Google finds multiple web pages have the same content they may penalize each website for this. Of course, someone may have copied your content and Google banned you even though it was your original content that was taken. Make sure no other site is using your content. You can do this by performing a Google search using some of your text with quotation marks (") around it. If you do find someone is using your original copy visit here to learn more about copyright infringement: http://www.google.com/dmca.html.

You can check here to see if your site has been duplicated unbeknowst to you: http://www.copyscape.com

Cloaking (A Big Google No-No)

2008-06-18T14:53:00.000-07:00

Straight from Google's website: "The term "cloaking" is used to describe a website that returns altered web pages to search engines crawling the site. In other words, the web server is programmed to return different content to Google than it returns to regular users, usually in an attempt to distort search engine rankings. This can mislead users about what they'll find when they click on a search result. To preserve the accuracy and quality of our search results, Google may permanently ban from our index any sites or site authors that engage in cloaking to distort their search rankings.

"If your website or web pages are set up to display different information for a search engine spider versus a real person, then you are cloaking. Cloaking delivers one version of a page to an Internet user and a different version to a search engine. The cloaked page is packed with keyword and terms that the site wants to be highly rank for so, in essence, they are cheating. There are good reasons for cloaking as well, such as targeted advertising, but if you are trying to manipulate your rankings you should put an end to this immediately.

Why has Google banned my website

2008-06-18T14:46:00.000-07:00

Usually there is no warning for being banned or penalized by Google except for the steady drop of sales and visitors to your site. Many site owners and search engine optimization firms are left with little to no idea why they were removed and can be left scratching their heads as to how to get back in. While there are many reasons why a site has been banned, here are a few of the more common reasons. If your site has been banned contact your SEO company or give Big Oak a call to help you get back on the right track to high Google rankings.

Google Sitemaps

2008-06-18T14:45:00.001-07:00

This just in: Google sitemaps is finally a useful tool. When Google launched sitemaps in June of 2005, they predicted that sitemaps would either be an enormous success or a colossal failure. Up to this point, sitemaps looked as if they were going to be that colossal failure. The system simply did not offer enough benefit to website owners for the amount of work required to put together and maintain an XML sitemap.

But it seems as if Google sitemaps is going to get new life. Google upgraded sitemaps to be far more powerful than before. Sitemaps is no longer a tool to simply get your website indexed, it is now a useful tool to quickly find problem areas on your website that might be hurting your ranking or indexing.

Read the entire article here: http://www.site-reference.com/articles/Search-Engines/Google-Sitemaps-For-SEO.html

I am always in favor of Google helping us understand the mysteries of their ranking system, if you need help in your understanding of getting better rankings on Google ask us for help.

Planning Your Site

2008-06-18T14:41:00.000-07:00

If your designer is not a search engine optimizer, hire one to work with your designer from the initial development stage of your site. If you would like a visible presence that is not dependant on traditional marketing efforts to get your name around, then you will have to optimize.

However, with advances in html and css, text itself can be a very flexible and attractive design element with endless possibilities. Site optimization consists of some rigid, unbendable rules. It can be intertwined successfully with very creative and attractive design. If your Designer and SEO aren't the same person or company, make sure they have the same, close working relationship.

About The Author
John Krycek is a creative director at the Mouseworks.ca Toronto website design.

Real case of Design balanced with SEO and salability

2008-06-18T14:39:00.000-07:00

If you sell jewelry solely online, you must have a catalog of exceptional photography and detailed, high-resolution close up images. But, you must be optimized and rank well if you want to sell any of that jewelry.

If such a company approached me with this project, my recommendation would be this: If you sell a product, people have to see that product. Lots of good images. The site should be slick and sheik and easy to navigate. The home page has to capture the buyer's attention. If it's very expensive jewelry, the site should have a lot of class and elegance. If it's home made jewelry, the site shouldn't look home made.

However, as you have no store front, if the online community can't find you, you're business will fail. So I'd have a very optimized home page with some discussion of the quality of your product, the history of your company, etc. This is also great sales copy. Ad a few special catalog pieces with descriptions below some smartly placed gifs, jpegs and readable type graphics built out of CSS and you've got a cool to look at, content rich, well optimized layout.

I'd make the link to your catalog very obvious and prominent. Note the catalog is not the homepage. I'd also include subsequent well written, in depth pages about the history of some specific pieces. Load them with targeted keywords and a few images. Again, make your catalog link very prominent. In doing so you're creating relevant content for search engines AND providing additional pages that can rank.

The catalog can be database driven, simple and changeable, and you have the foundation to build your search rank.

Aesthetic Importance vs. Traffic

2008-06-18T14:38:00.000-07:00

Everyone has an idea of what they want their site to look like. The pretty factor- splash pages, cool flash and graphics must now be justified as to their importance to the bottom line. If you want/need to establish an online presence, you will have to make some compromises in these areas.

Understand exactly the role your site should play in your company marketing.

Ask- What is the goal of your website and who is its audience? Is it for existing clients to see? Is it to reach new clients? To venture into yet untapped market segments?

Ask- How strongly do your other marketing efforts promote your site?

Ask- Is your website an extension of your existing collateral that must reflect the same graphical look?

Ask- Is your website meant to assist to your sales force or is it your sales force?

Chances are you wont have any single answers. That's ok. It will give you some meat for your designer/SEO to digest and develop a solution for you.

SEO usually means REDO

2008-06-18T14:37:00.000-07:00

In the previous pumpkin example, CSS will eliminate the need for almost any extra code at all, and provide the means to place the text to the right of the photo.

Now, imagine that someone had already created this page, but done so using other programming methods. The page could very well be W3C compliant, well programmed and got the job done. However, without designing and programming for optimization as in the above illustration, the end result would have no significant rank compared to others that do.

You can be sure that there exist at least 30 web sites built to rank for the keywords “pumpkin bread recipe”. Note- why did I use the number 30? It's safe to assume if you're not on the first three results pages of a search, you're not being seen.

While this is a simple example, hopefully you understand that it would be impossible to optimize this simple page without redoing it. This isn't always the case, but extrapolate this into detailed, multiple pages in an entire website and the issue is greatly magnified.

Construction 101- Attractive Design and SEO

2008-06-18T14:36:00.000-07:00

Sadly, it's very difficult to optimize a site without completely overhauling it. You'll soon understand why. Design and SEO must be strongly rooted into every aspect of each other, possessing a true, symbiotic relationship. Lets look at a simplified example of this. Lets say you are optimizing a page for the keyword phrase, “pumpkin bread recipe.”

>From a design standpoint “Pumpkin Bread Recipe” would be the heading for the page, in a nice, readable font with the words perhaps an orange-brown color. And lets add a fine, green rule around it.

There are many ways to create that simple, colored heading. However, there is only one way that is best for both design and SEO. That is to use Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS. In addition, that line of code containing “Pumpkin Bread Recipe” needs to be as close to the top of the page as possible (which CSS also allows).

To a viewer, the recipe text might be read more if it were located to the right of a photo of a buttered piece of pumpkin bread on a small plate next to a lightly steaming cup of coffee.

SEO needs to read that ingredient list and baking instructions. Search engines now understand on a rudimentary level that the ingredients are indeed related to the optimized words- pumpkin bread recipe.

Additionally, it would take many extra lines of code to make a table in this example if you didn't use CSS. Search engines don't like extra code. In fact, given enough times, that “extra” code will make the keyword phrases seem less important and hurt rank.

Note: In the page code, a few thousand characters more than you need to get all of that content organized would normally just add to your page load time, and might be acceptable. But to a search engine, that time can really add up. It wont read through page after page, site after site, billionth after billionth character of unimportant code to find the relevant text. Therefore, the less code, the better your chances. Moral- Less code, more content.

Design is for brochures, instant results are for the web

2008-06-18T14:34:00.000-07:00

That's not the whole truth, but it will help compare and contrast design and SEO. In reality, SEO needs the quantity and detail of supporting text that a brochure has, but good web design has to catch a viewer's attention in 5 seconds. It's pretty difficult to read and absorb the content of an entire brochure in less than 5 seconds.

Search engines need rich, related, appropriate, changing and poignant content. And for them to rank you, all of that must be on your pages. But if it's not well organized and broken down into bite size chunks, no one is going to bother learning about what you're offering.

Design Can't Be Ignored

2008-06-18T14:33:00.000-07:00

If you have an existing site, you've probably tied it into your existing promotional content. Even if you've allowed your website to cater to the more free form of the net, it should still be designed as a recognizable extension of your business.

The reasons for doing so are valid, and can't simply be ignored for the sake of achieving a first age position, can they? If your research into search optimization leaves you shuffling around thoughts of content, keyword saturated copy and varying link text, you are correctly understanding some of the basic pillars of search engine optimization.

And, you aren't alone if you have this disheartening thought—If I do all this SEO stuff and reach number one across the board, who would stay at my site because it's so stale and boring I'm even embarrassed to send people there!

There are two ways to successfully combine design and SEO. The first is to be a blue chip and/or Fortune 500 company with multi million dollar advertising and branding budgets to deliver your website address via television, radio, billboards, PR parties and giveaways with your logo.

Since chances are that's not you, and certainly not me, lets look at the second option. It begins with some research into your market, some thoughtful and creative planning, and a designer who is a search engine optimizer, and understands at least basic CSS and HTML programming techniques. Or a combination of people with these skills that can work very well together.

Technology Column: Design vs. SEO: Can My Site Look Good and Rank Well

2008-06-18T14:32:00.000-07:00

Do you have to sacrifice all of the creative and artistic elements of your web site to rank in the search engines? Later in this article I'll show you a real case scenario and the design and SEO approach used.

Thanks to the birth of professional search engine marketers the top ranks are saturated with the pages of companies that can pay for such insight. That said, it's certainly possible to employ high ranking tactics in your own website. Actually, the most basic tactics can move you up from an 800 position to a 300. However, it's the top of the scale where efforts seem almost inversely exponential or logarithmic, you put a ton in to see a tiny change in rank.

How do you meld the ambitious overhauls required to attain significant ranking and NOT compromise the design of your site?

Good Website Design and Search Engine Optimization, Is It Possible

2008-06-18T14:29:00.000-07:00

At Big Oak SEO we come across the debate of Search Engine Optimization versus goo design. We feel both can be achieved if the company working on your site understands both. At Big Oak SEO we do. We have trained graphic designers who work with trained SEO Consultants to create a site, both pleasing to the eye and high-ranking in the search engine Results. We can help your site or business.

Should Your Company Be Found In the Search Engines

2008-06-18T14:18:00.000-07:00

Online Marketing in the Offline World
By Tom Blue & Alyssa Duvall

Search engines are fast replacing the yellow pages as a place for consumers to find businesses. People Google everything – from a business name to find the phone number, to product names to find companies that sell a certain model, to types of services to find companies offering them. But when you’re not selling online and you don’t have locations across the country, does it make sense to be found in search engines like Google? Let’s look at offline buying and how location matters.

Search Engines Influence Offline Behavior

There is an opportunity for companies that sell offline. comScore, a global information consultancy, reported in March 2006 that 25% of searchers purchased an item (either online or offline) related to their search. Measuring across six product categories, comScore discovered that 37% of searchers purchased online, and an amazing 63% purchased offline at store locations. The lesson here – You don’t need to sell and fulfill orders online to generate sales from your web site.

Search engines are the ultimate pull marketing channel. Consumers are looking for you and are using the search engines for a variety of reasons depending on where they are in their buying process: reaching out for general information, researching a specific product or service, making a purchase, etc. Being one of the companies they find during this process puts you in the running to make the sale.

Use Location to Your Advantage

Some products can be bought online, shipped, and the transaction is complete. But other products and services are location dependent. Take, for example, lawn care. Hiring a company in another state doesn’t make sense. Type “lawn care service” into Google, and results will include products you can buy for your lawn, tips on how to find a lawn care service, and national companies. If they want their lawn mowed, searchers will quickly modify their search to include their location – be it their state or the nearest city.

The good news for marketers is that on a local level, the competition in the search engines is generally less.

Should You Invest in Search Engine Optimization?

This comes down to a simple matter of return on investment. If yours is a type of business that can initiate the selling process online, and if there is sufficient search traffic on terms related to your business to justify the effort, then the answer is yes.

A great place to start exploring the potential of search engine marketing is Google’s keyword tool at:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

If you become serious about the possibility of dedicating marketing resources to driving search engine traffic to your site, you will likely benefit from hiring a professional search marketing firm to conduct an opportunity assessment for you.

Next time, we will look more closely at how to select the words you may want to target and how to maximize your odds of producing a positive return on investment from search engine optimization.

About the Authors
Tom Blue is the Managing Partner of Accelerated Growth Partners, a Richmond, VA. He is a marketing coach and business consultant and is well known for his presentations and workshops on small business marketing.

Alyssa Duvall is a search engine marketing strategist and SEO copywriting expert with Big Oak Inc., a search engine marketing firm in Richmond, VA. Read more about Big Oak at www.bigoakinc.com.

black hat seo search engine optimization

2008-06-18T12:07:00.000-07:00

Black hat practitioners tend to see search engine optimization as a war, and search engines as the enemy to be beaten by all means fair or foul. White hatters tend to view search engines as allies, who can help drive business to their clients' sites.

Cloaking – when website or web pages are set up to display different content for a search engine spider versus a human user. Cloaking delivers one version of a page to an Internet user and a different version to a search engine. The cloaked page is packed with keywords and phrases that the website wants to be highly rank for so.

It is done by cloaking programs that compare the IP address of the requesting party to a database of known IP addresses from specific search engine spiders. If the IP address matches one on the list, it serves a page that was specifically written for the search engines.

There are good reasons for cloaking as well, such as targeted advertising, but if you are trying to manipulate your rankings in the search engines then your site could be penalized or banned.

Spamming (Keyword Stuffing) - “Stuffing” long lists of keywords into the content and the code on a page that makes the page unreadable

Ever seen a web page with a very awkwardly written first paragraph where a certain word is repeated ad nauseam? Here's an example:

"We sell the best father's day gifts for father's day. If you like to celebrate father's day we can help with the best father's day gifts for father's day."

It's obvious that the page is trying to rank well for “father's day gifts.” This is keyword spamming or stuffing but it is just the tip of the SEO iceberg; there is probably keyword stuffing happening in the code: in the meta tags, invisible text, alt tags, title tags, comment tags, etc. If the word or phrase is repeated too often Google can place a filter to reduce the site's rankings or simply ban the site. Keyword density can be tricky but, as a general rule, Big Oak shoots for 3% to 12% of all text on a page to be our targeted keywords.

Hidden Text – if text or links are invisible to the website visitor but can be seen by search engine spiders then they are considered hidden.In the past people would simply make the text too small to read by using a 1 point font or make it the same color as the background. Now that search engines have built in algorithms to combat that, spammers are using cascading style sheets (CSS) to hide text or using

tags set to not display text on the page. It is boils down to this: it is considered hidden if the text or link is invisible to the website visitor but can be seen by search engine spiders.Search engines can easily spot this today so it is best to avoid it altogether.

Doorway Pages – pages that solely exist to rank well in the search engines. Sometimes these pages are ugly, containing paragraph after paragraph of meaningless text. Most the time doorway pages are orphaned pages meaning they are not part of the site's regular navigation.

A black hat SEO firm may use software to generated doorway pages. They plug a few keywords in and the software proceeds to generate pages where much of the content is duplicated from other pages on the site except they swap out the keywords.

Redirect Pages - keyword-stuffed landing pages that quickly redirect to the real page. These pages don't necessarily contain content that any human would be interested in. They are meant to show up high in search engine results pages (SERPS). When you click on one of these pages from the results, you are redirected to another page–usually a high-pressure sales page. In other words, the page you click to see is not the page you actually get to read.

Sneaky redirection pages are set up in groups. They target similar and related keywords or phrases. The only links on these pages are links to other pages in the same family creating a false sense of related linking. The redirect can be automatic, done with a meta refresh command or through other means such as mouse moving while on the redirect page.

Duplicate Content or Websites – setting up multiple websites with the same content or having several pages on a site with essentially the same information but different keywords inserted here and there. You see the duplicate content method a lot with travel-oriented sites. A "template script" is written then regional terms, such as state or city names, are swapped out on each page.

Of course, someone may have copied the content on your site and put it on their site. The search engines do not make any distinction on who had the content first. Make sure no other site is using your content. You can do this by performing a search using some of your text with quotation marks (") around it. If you do find someone is using your original copy visit here to learn more about copyright infringement: http://www.google.com/dmca.html.

Code swapping - submitting a text-only version of a web page to the search engines in an effort to gain high rankings for that page. Once the desired positions within the search engines are achieved the search-engine friendly text page is swapped out for a content page designed for human visitors. This will only work for a limited time as the search engine spiders will eventually return to that page and find its content has changed.

Linking to Unrelated Sites or Bad Neighborhoods – Link campaigns are good thing when done correctly; we would say they are a necessity in today's SEO world. But linking to bad neighborhoods is a sure way to lose your ranking. If you aren't careful about who you are linking to you can easily disappear overnight. Basically, while you may be ethical and do everything right, linking to someone who isn't can be considered guilt by association. Always verify your links to other sites. Make sure they have page rank and are indexed by Google. Avoid linking to any sites that use spamming techniques to increase their search engine rankings. Regularly checking outbound links from your site and removing any offenders is a good idea.

A few site types to avoid:

Free-for-all link farms
Adult sites
Gambling sites

Link Farms – typically a network of sites that are all interlinked to one another and have no other benefit but to try to boost the link popularity of the sites. Link farms are mostly used to try to increase the Google PageRank of a site.

What does Google say?

"Don't deceive your users, or present different content to search engines than you display to users," Google says, and they list some bullet points on avoiding being banned.

Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
Don't send automated queries to Google.
Don't load pages with irrelevant words.
Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

Helpful Google & Yahoo Links

Finally…

Any SEO company can use these techniques to boost a client's rankings and more often than not it will work, but sooner or a later a search engine will catch it or a competitor will report it and then you have to start all over. It is best to do what is right for the client and their customers. Ultimately that is what will bring them back.

Privacy Policy

2008-06-18T12:00:00.000-07:00

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