In today's online world search engine rankings can make your business succeed, and while rankings in Yahoo and MSN are very valuable, their combined market value is still less than that of Google. This makes achieving top rankings in Google that much more important.
THE RIGHT KEYWORDS
This article is not about keyword research so I will not spend too much time on this topic, however, I felt it was important to at least brush on this slightly.
Make sure that your targets are achievable. If you select the wrong keywords it can make your entire optimisation experience essentially a waste or time. Choose keywords that are attainable but yet still offer a reasonable search frequency for your industry. Your phrase selection should also be targeted to bring qualified traffic to your site.
Using the travel industry as an example, targeting the word "travel" would make very little sense but by narrowing it down to "New York travel" for example, you now have less competition, and a more qualified audience. Keep your targets in perspective and go after the obtainable rankings.
WEBSITE OPTIMIZATION
There are many on-site factors that play a role in your search engine rankings. Here are a number of those factors, and what you can do to increase your chances of success.
Title Tag
The title tag plays one of the most important roles in search results at Google, and is almost always the heading Google chooses for each of its listings. Placement of your target phrase is best used near the start of the tag and repeated again in the middle or near the end. Three uses of your target phrase may be helpful in some instances, as long as it is not too overwhelming. For best results each page on your site should have a totally unique title tag.
It is also important to remember that because Google will use this title as the main heading for your listing, you will want to keep it attractive to potential searchers. Try to also add a call to action, or other wording to help make your listing appear attractive to searchers.
To help illustrate the fact Google takes this tag into consideration, simply do a search for your target phrase and take a look at the titles of the top 10. I tried a search for a rather broad term "travel" and saw that all 10/10 listings had it in the title tag, and 6/10 had it as the very first word. A quick scan showed that the entire top 30 either had the word travel, or travels in their title tags.
If you do only one thing to your website, make sure that all your title tags are relevant, unique, and contain your target phrase for each page.
Meta Description Tag
The Meta Description tag is still occasionally used by Google as the description which appears in the search results themselves. While this used to be a more common practice Google tends to use it most often on sites with very limited content, or those which are flash based. I have seen it still used for content rich sites, however this is less common.
The Meta Description tag still has an impact on search rankings. Your best bet when using this tag is to keep it short and sweet with your target phrase close to the start and never repeated more than 3 times. Like the title tag, each page on you site should have its own unique description tag.
Meta Keyword Tag
When it comes to Google this tag is useless, and won't influence your rankings. There is some speculation as to whether a spammy keyword tag can however, have a negative effect on Google rankings. As a result, if you do utilize a keyword Meta tag for the smaller engines, it is best to keep it clean and play it safe.
Keyword Density
Keyword density plays a role in overall rankings; however, it is not as cut and dry as it once was. Once upon a time there was a magic number that when used could almost guarantee top rankings. This is no longer the case. Today the ideal density varies from industry to industry, phrase to phrase. To find out what density you should aim for, take the top 10 or 20 search results and see what percentage those sites are using. In most cases you will find that the majority of these sites have a very similar density to one another, and this average density is a good estimation of what you should aim for.
Body Text and Keyword Placement
The location of relevant text on your site will help establish the overall importance of your target phrase. While you do not want to overwhelm the engines and site visitors with a bombardment of target phrases at the top of the page, try to sprinkle in some instances as close to the top of the page as possible.
Synonyms
Be sure to include various synonyms for your target phrases within your body text on your site. Google will use these synonyms to tie in the overall relevance of the page for your main target phrases, which in turn can improve your odds. To find possible synonyms you can use a thesaurus, but the best way is to search Google itself and see exactly what they consider to be similar. Simply search in Google for your target phrase preceded with a title, such as "travel". Next scan through the search results for any text Google has bolded. These are all words that Google considers to be related. Using the "travel" example Google brings up phrases such as 'travel', 'tourism', 'accommodation', as well as various other travel related terms.
Keywords in Domain
There is still some speculation if having a target phrase as part of your top level domain (TLD) is of use to search rankings. From my experience, yes, there is value here, although, nothing like it was several years ago. If you are starting off in the online world and are contemplating which domain to go for, consider one that uses your target phrase, assuming that it is both relevant to your business name, and uses no more than a single hyphen. While multiple hyphens in a domain can be successful, they are very common with highly spammy websites, so it is best to not take that route if possible.
While having a keyword located within your domain can offer some ranking juice, I would not suggest heading out and doing a domain swap. In most cases you would be better off working on your existing site than starting from scratch with a new domain.
Keywords in page specific URL
Using keywords for specific page URL's can also help add a little bit of value to your site, providing you use them responsibly. Consider using a keyword as a directory name and as part of a file name where it naturally makes sense to do so.
Heading Tags
Placement of target phrases within heading tags helps to establish the importance of those given phrases. That said do not over do it, or abuse it. Only place target phrases within a heading tag if it makes sense to do so, and don't flood a page with numerous tags. Heading tags are not as critical as they once were, but still a good contribution to a well optimized page.
Link Anchor Text
This is the actual text you click on as part of a link. When full or partial target phrases are used within your text links they help pass on some value to the linked page for those phrases. This is also true when considering surrounding text. When the content around the link is also relevant, the link holds slightly more value.
While a link that simply states "click here" or "www.domainname" does have its place, they provide considerably less value than a link that would use "discount travel" as its anchor.
Image Alt Text
While image alt text still plays a minor role, its biggest part is within the use of image based navigation. If you have an image linked to another page, the alt text will be attributed much the same way as standard link anchor text is.
Image Alt text should always be short and to the point and should accurately describe either the image itself, or the page the image is linking to. Do not use alt tags as a place to stuff keywords.
Inline Links
These are links that are found mid sentence or mid paragraph as opposed to a simple listing of links as found in a menu or possibly on a sitemap. Links found mid paragraph tend to pass on a little more value from the surrounding text and can offer more relevance to the linked page.
Site Navigation
It is absolutely imperative that your website be fully spiderable by the search engines. This may seem obvious, but often webmasters overlook Google's ability to crawl a website. Google has become very advanced in what links it can follow and how it can spider a website, but there are still some things that can cause significant roadblocks.
- Flash: One of the most commonly made mistakes is the use of flash. If flash is used as a sole means of site navigation then you can count on Google not viewing your internal pages, and having a significant disadvantage in terms of site rankings.
- Java Script / DHTML: These days most Java Script and even DHTML menus can be spidered by Google, however, this is not always the case. If your site utilizes any kind of fancy navigation and you are wondering why Google has not indexed your internal pages, check out Google's Cached Text version of your page. If you do not see any text links, then your navigation may be invisible to Google.
- Images: Image based navigation has been safe for many years now, but if your site uses this form of navigation it is essential to have brief, relevant alt text on all your buttons. This alt text will act much like standard anchor text for text based links. This is not only for the purpose of search ranking value, but take a look at Google's cached text version of your page. If you have image based links that do not have alt text, those links do not appear. This doesn't mean Google won't follow them, but for anyone viewing your site on a text based browser, your links will be invisible to them.
URL Structure
Avoid long elaborate URL's with extraneous characters. While Google has reached a point where they can index massive URL strings, it is best to avoid them if at all possible. For dynamic sites consider utilizing mod rewrites to significantly clean up the URL to not only make it more search engine friendly, but more user friendly as well.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Friday, April 11, 2008
Identify SEO Problems
When You Aren't Getting the Results You Expected.
After a thorough Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaign has been completed, it can be incredibly frustrating to find you aren't getting any rankings on your selected keywords.
You can't ask the search engines why your site isn't ranked; they won't respond to specific questions about lack of rankings from website owners.
Whether you have handled your SEO yourself, or hired an SEO Firm, this can happen. No one controls the engines, and the results aren't always what you would expect.
The good news is the search engines are logical - they are based on a very specific algorithm, and with a little more effort and attention to the details to make sure it isn't a minor mistake holding things up - you should be able to enhance your site and fix the problems to get the results you are looking for.
Back to the Basics.
The first place to start depends on whether you are handling your SEO yourself, or have outsourced it to an SEO Firm. If you have outsourced your SEO, you need to contact the Firm and ask them to explain what they are doing to address the situation and what their theory is for the lack of results.
If you are handling your own SEO, then you need to take a step back and look at the basics - make sure you haven't left anything out - or worse still, made an error that could be preventing the results you are looking for.
What are the Basics?
As with most SEO issues, it all comes down to knowledge and time. You need to have the information to ensure you are handling things correctly - and you need to have the time to implement the steps properly.
Here is a list of items to consider and some potential problems. These are all reasons your site may not be getting the rankings you are looking for.
Start at the top of the list and work your way through each item, making sure that you look at the details and specifics.
Index Time: The amount of time before the engine indexes your site should be listed on the search engine's submission page, but these aren't always accurate or may be out of date. On average, index times range from one to eight weeks, depending on the engine.
Already Indexed: The major engines won't tell you if you're listed; it's up to you to find out. The method to discover if a page or domain has been indexed varies from one engine to another. Never assume you're not indexed just because you searched through keywords and you never came up in the first few pages of results. You could still be indexed and end up at the bottom of the heap.
Site Map From Home Page: Some engines have been known to drop pages that cannot be traveled to from the home page. Hot Bot has been rumored to do this. Think of your site links as a series of roads from one page to another. If there's no road from your home page to the page you want indexed, a search engine may decide the page is unnecessary.
External Links: Some search engines may index your home page but refuse to index any other pages unless there are links from another domain. Or, they may index you for a while but then "prune" their database later because you didn't achieve any external links after a certain period of time.
Free Sites: Because of all the "junk" submissions from free websites like Geo cities, many engines choose not to index sites from such domains or limit the number of pages they accept.
Frames: Content inside of HTML frames can cause problems with submissions because the search engine may index the main content of the page, but not the surrounding menu frame. Visitors to your site find some information but miss the associated menu. It's generally better to create non-framed versions of your pages.
Spider Blocks: Search engine spiders cannot index sites that require a registration or password, and they can't fill out forms. This also applies to indexing of content from a search able database. The solution is to create static pages that the engines can find and index without performing a special action on your site. Depending on your database system, there are both utility programs and companies that can assist you with this.
Guilt Through Association: If your website shares the same IP address as other websites on your host's web server, you may find your IP quietly banned because of something someone else did. Ask your hosting service if your domain name has its own unique IP assigned to it. If not, ask them to move it to its own IP to avoid being penalized because of someone else.
Non-Index able Content: Most engines cannot index text embedded in images or multimedia files (audio and video). Most engines also cannot index information that is generated by Java applets.
Large Pages: If your site has a slow connection or the pages are very complex and take a long time to load, it might time out before the spider finishes indexing. To avoid this, limit your page size to 50K or less. A good rule of thumb is that:page size + cumulative image sizes on the page = 50K-70K If it is greater than that amount, visitors with dial-up connections will leave before the page fully loads.
Unreliable Hosts: It pays to have a reliable hosting service. If your website doesn't respond when the search engine spider visits, you won't be indexed. Even worse, if you are indexed and they pay a visit when your site is down, you could be removed from the database.
Proper Directory Submissions: When submitting to a directory site like Yahoo, Open Directory, Look Smart, and others, a live person reviews your site. They decide if the site is of sufficient "quality" before they list it. These directories can help you get listed with other engines, so make sure you give your directory submissions the attention they need.
Spam: If you use questionable techniques that might be considered an overt attempt at spamming (i.e., excessive repetition of keywords, same color text as background) an engine may ignore or reject your submissions.
Redirects: Redirects or Meta refresh tags sometimes cause the engines to have trouble indexing your site. If the engines think you are trying to "trick" them by using "cloaking" or IP redirection technology, they may not index the site at all.
Index Times Can Fluctuate: A major engine will not typically go more than three to four months without refreshing its index, but sometimes they'll index sites every 30 days consistently, and then suddenly stop indexing most sites for several months. It can be frustrating, but it happens.
Page Limits: Search engines will only spider so many pages of your Website. This could be a few dozen or three or four hundred depending on the engine. Google is one engine that tends to crawl deeper into your site. How deep they go may depend on factors like your link popularity. Sites with higher link popularity are deemed "worthier" of more thorough indexing.
Random Errors: Sometimes the engines simply lose submissions at random because of bugs and technical errors. Mistakes happen - remember, they're managing a database containing hundreds of millions of pages.
After a thorough Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaign has been completed, it can be incredibly frustrating to find you aren't getting any rankings on your selected keywords.
You can't ask the search engines why your site isn't ranked; they won't respond to specific questions about lack of rankings from website owners.
Whether you have handled your SEO yourself, or hired an SEO Firm, this can happen. No one controls the engines, and the results aren't always what you would expect.
The good news is the search engines are logical - they are based on a very specific algorithm, and with a little more effort and attention to the details to make sure it isn't a minor mistake holding things up - you should be able to enhance your site and fix the problems to get the results you are looking for.
Back to the Basics.
The first place to start depends on whether you are handling your SEO yourself, or have outsourced it to an SEO Firm. If you have outsourced your SEO, you need to contact the Firm and ask them to explain what they are doing to address the situation and what their theory is for the lack of results.
If you are handling your own SEO, then you need to take a step back and look at the basics - make sure you haven't left anything out - or worse still, made an error that could be preventing the results you are looking for.
What are the Basics?
As with most SEO issues, it all comes down to knowledge and time. You need to have the information to ensure you are handling things correctly - and you need to have the time to implement the steps properly.
Here is a list of items to consider and some potential problems. These are all reasons your site may not be getting the rankings you are looking for.
Start at the top of the list and work your way through each item, making sure that you look at the details and specifics.
Index Time: The amount of time before the engine indexes your site should be listed on the search engine's submission page, but these aren't always accurate or may be out of date. On average, index times range from one to eight weeks, depending on the engine.
Already Indexed: The major engines won't tell you if you're listed; it's up to you to find out. The method to discover if a page or domain has been indexed varies from one engine to another. Never assume you're not indexed just because you searched through keywords and you never came up in the first few pages of results. You could still be indexed and end up at the bottom of the heap.
Site Map From Home Page: Some engines have been known to drop pages that cannot be traveled to from the home page. Hot Bot has been rumored to do this. Think of your site links as a series of roads from one page to another. If there's no road from your home page to the page you want indexed, a search engine may decide the page is unnecessary.
External Links: Some search engines may index your home page but refuse to index any other pages unless there are links from another domain. Or, they may index you for a while but then "prune" their database later because you didn't achieve any external links after a certain period of time.
Free Sites: Because of all the "junk" submissions from free websites like Geo cities, many engines choose not to index sites from such domains or limit the number of pages they accept.
Frames: Content inside of HTML frames can cause problems with submissions because the search engine may index the main content of the page, but not the surrounding menu frame. Visitors to your site find some information but miss the associated menu. It's generally better to create non-framed versions of your pages.
Spider Blocks: Search engine spiders cannot index sites that require a registration or password, and they can't fill out forms. This also applies to indexing of content from a search able database. The solution is to create static pages that the engines can find and index without performing a special action on your site. Depending on your database system, there are both utility programs and companies that can assist you with this.
Guilt Through Association: If your website shares the same IP address as other websites on your host's web server, you may find your IP quietly banned because of something someone else did. Ask your hosting service if your domain name has its own unique IP assigned to it. If not, ask them to move it to its own IP to avoid being penalized because of someone else.
Non-Index able Content: Most engines cannot index text embedded in images or multimedia files (audio and video). Most engines also cannot index information that is generated by Java applets.
Large Pages: If your site has a slow connection or the pages are very complex and take a long time to load, it might time out before the spider finishes indexing. To avoid this, limit your page size to 50K or less. A good rule of thumb is that:page size + cumulative image sizes on the page = 50K-70K If it is greater than that amount, visitors with dial-up connections will leave before the page fully loads.
Unreliable Hosts: It pays to have a reliable hosting service. If your website doesn't respond when the search engine spider visits, you won't be indexed. Even worse, if you are indexed and they pay a visit when your site is down, you could be removed from the database.
Proper Directory Submissions: When submitting to a directory site like Yahoo, Open Directory, Look Smart, and others, a live person reviews your site. They decide if the site is of sufficient "quality" before they list it. These directories can help you get listed with other engines, so make sure you give your directory submissions the attention they need.
Spam: If you use questionable techniques that might be considered an overt attempt at spamming (i.e., excessive repetition of keywords, same color text as background) an engine may ignore or reject your submissions.
Redirects: Redirects or Meta refresh tags sometimes cause the engines to have trouble indexing your site. If the engines think you are trying to "trick" them by using "cloaking" or IP redirection technology, they may not index the site at all.
Index Times Can Fluctuate: A major engine will not typically go more than three to four months without refreshing its index, but sometimes they'll index sites every 30 days consistently, and then suddenly stop indexing most sites for several months. It can be frustrating, but it happens.
Page Limits: Search engines will only spider so many pages of your Website. This could be a few dozen or three or four hundred depending on the engine. Google is one engine that tends to crawl deeper into your site. How deep they go may depend on factors like your link popularity. Sites with higher link popularity are deemed "worthier" of more thorough indexing.
Random Errors: Sometimes the engines simply lose submissions at random because of bugs and technical errors. Mistakes happen - remember, they're managing a database containing hundreds of millions of pages.
Monday, April 7, 2008
Blog Promotion Using RSS Feeds And Blog Submission Software
It happens to everyone at some point in time. You have a great idea for a blog, on a new niche topic. You create the blog; you post interesting and creative posts to it each day, and then nothing. You post your brilliant and original thoughts for everyone online to read, but no one is coming around to read your blog. And, because no one can find your blog to read it, you are not generating any links or improvement in your search engine rankings either. What is a blogger to do?
Promoting your blog is essential to its success. You need to promote your blog so that you become recognized as an expert in your chosen niche and can monetize your blog. However, you also want to promote your blog to increase the traffic to your site, reach a new reading audience, and most importantly to create as many inbound links as possible. Creating inbound links ensures that your website rankings and search engine optimization efforts pay off for you in the biggest ways possible. You want to promote your blog to as many people in your niche market as you possibly can. And, you want to do it as often as you possibly can.
Some people believe that the best way to promote a blog is through comments on other popular blogs with a link to your own blog, comments on UseNet or other Internet message boards or forums, posting press releases and articles, etc.. However, the easiest and most time efficient way to promote your blog is through RSS feed and blog submissions to directories hands down.
The issue with using a manual feed submitter, or using an individual RSS submitter, is that it is very time consuming to deal with on a consistent basis. Most bloggers want to write their posts and be done with their work for the day. They do not want to spend a half-hour writing a post and then three more hours trying to submit their RSS feed and content to directories in hopes of bringing in some readers and sneaking up their search engine rankings. The good news is that today programmers have developed some great semi-automatic RSS feed submit tools which you can now choose from to help submit your RSS feed and blog to directories without it being so time consuming.
Feed submitter software programs allow you to simultaneously submit your blog and RSS feeds to literally thousands of directories, and to do it all with only a couple quick clicks of your mouse. Setting up the RSS feed submission software is simple to do and the submission process takes very little time to complete. Using RSS feed submitters is much easier and quicker than attempting manual RSS submits.
If you are a blogger interested in publishing RSS feeds, XML feeds, and getting your feed out into the RSS databases of the world, I would highly suggest that you check out some of the amazing new RSS software tools available to you today on the market. Choose a tool that is easy to use and one which will allow you to reach the maximum amount of directories possible for the least amount of work.
Writing your blog posts should be the hardest part of blogging, not trying to get noticed and dealing with SEO. Thankfully, the advent of semi-automatic feed submitters allows you to spend your time doing your writing and not dealing as much with promotion.
Promoting your blog is essential to its success. You need to promote your blog so that you become recognized as an expert in your chosen niche and can monetize your blog. However, you also want to promote your blog to increase the traffic to your site, reach a new reading audience, and most importantly to create as many inbound links as possible. Creating inbound links ensures that your website rankings and search engine optimization efforts pay off for you in the biggest ways possible. You want to promote your blog to as many people in your niche market as you possibly can. And, you want to do it as often as you possibly can.
Some people believe that the best way to promote a blog is through comments on other popular blogs with a link to your own blog, comments on UseNet or other Internet message boards or forums, posting press releases and articles, etc.. However, the easiest and most time efficient way to promote your blog is through RSS feed and blog submissions to directories hands down.
The issue with using a manual feed submitter, or using an individual RSS submitter, is that it is very time consuming to deal with on a consistent basis. Most bloggers want to write their posts and be done with their work for the day. They do not want to spend a half-hour writing a post and then three more hours trying to submit their RSS feed and content to directories in hopes of bringing in some readers and sneaking up their search engine rankings. The good news is that today programmers have developed some great semi-automatic RSS feed submit tools which you can now choose from to help submit your RSS feed and blog to directories without it being so time consuming.
Feed submitter software programs allow you to simultaneously submit your blog and RSS feeds to literally thousands of directories, and to do it all with only a couple quick clicks of your mouse. Setting up the RSS feed submission software is simple to do and the submission process takes very little time to complete. Using RSS feed submitters is much easier and quicker than attempting manual RSS submits.
If you are a blogger interested in publishing RSS feeds, XML feeds, and getting your feed out into the RSS databases of the world, I would highly suggest that you check out some of the amazing new RSS software tools available to you today on the market. Choose a tool that is easy to use and one which will allow you to reach the maximum amount of directories possible for the least amount of work.
Writing your blog posts should be the hardest part of blogging, not trying to get noticed and dealing with SEO. Thankfully, the advent of semi-automatic feed submitters allows you to spend your time doing your writing and not dealing as much with promotion.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Search Engine Optimization. An Overview
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process by which the quality and volume of traffic can be improved on a search engine on the Internet. Normally when we search for a particular piece of information or data on any top search engine ranking the results we get, are presented in a serial order by the particular search engine. This presentation of the results is derived from what is called the ‘Algorithmic’ basis and the results that figure at the top of the order are the ones that would be visited more often.
A number of times the process of SEO could focus on searches that broadly range from ‘vertical search’ to ‘horizontal search’ or could be a very specific search. The process of SEO depends to a great extent on how the search engine has been designed to respond to specific searches. A search engine may have a particular set of search words or ‘Keywords’ that has been used by a very large number of visitors to a particular site on this search engine. In this case the designers of the search engine would invariably give a very high priority to this particular set of keywords that would display the website in a privileged position in the top three or top five results on the search engine.
Now, although certain search engines do have somewhat different algorithms that are liable to change sometimes, it has been found that all engines more or less similarly appreciate the information that searchers look for, such as:
Simple, clean and implicit search engine friendly web site design.
Carefully prepared, perceptive direction.
Descriptive and well-written text.
Tag content that that optimizes identification of relevant keywords.
Accurate links that extend the scope of the search.
It is true that good content that provides relevant information to the visitor to the site utilizing keyword phrases should be the objective of all contents that makes its way to the World Wide Web. Therefore a professional content writer and not SEO, is what is vital for that aspect of the job. In fact most people would rather be presented with information they require in clear, concise language, right on the main page of the site they are visiting.
Normally a decent search engine strategy takes up to a year to work although it might also work with minimal effort for a long time although it might not perform well in the beginning. If the site does not provide the visitors with what they want then it might never perform at all. Therefore while designing a site, it is important to remember that for the site to be up on the World Wide Web it will first be read by search engines that are machines. On the other hand, any content designed specifically for machine-readability could turn off a real visitor who is not interested in how the pages appear to a machine. Hence SEO is basically a question of balance.
A number of times the process of SEO could focus on searches that broadly range from ‘vertical search’ to ‘horizontal search’ or could be a very specific search. The process of SEO depends to a great extent on how the search engine has been designed to respond to specific searches. A search engine may have a particular set of search words or ‘Keywords’ that has been used by a very large number of visitors to a particular site on this search engine. In this case the designers of the search engine would invariably give a very high priority to this particular set of keywords that would display the website in a privileged position in the top three or top five results on the search engine.
Now, although certain search engines do have somewhat different algorithms that are liable to change sometimes, it has been found that all engines more or less similarly appreciate the information that searchers look for, such as:
Simple, clean and implicit search engine friendly web site design.
Carefully prepared, perceptive direction.
Descriptive and well-written text.
Tag content that that optimizes identification of relevant keywords.
Accurate links that extend the scope of the search.
It is true that good content that provides relevant information to the visitor to the site utilizing keyword phrases should be the objective of all contents that makes its way to the World Wide Web. Therefore a professional content writer and not SEO, is what is vital for that aspect of the job. In fact most people would rather be presented with information they require in clear, concise language, right on the main page of the site they are visiting.
Normally a decent search engine strategy takes up to a year to work although it might also work with minimal effort for a long time although it might not perform well in the beginning. If the site does not provide the visitors with what they want then it might never perform at all. Therefore while designing a site, it is important to remember that for the site to be up on the World Wide Web it will first be read by search engines that are machines. On the other hand, any content designed specifically for machine-readability could turn off a real visitor who is not interested in how the pages appear to a machine. Hence SEO is basically a question of balance.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
The Relevance Of Website Structure From An SEO Point Of View
It is now established that search engine optimization depends as much on the quality of the content, as it is on the structure that virtually holds the website together. With the World Wide Web becoming the single most important source of information the critical importance of structure has been on the rise. Today most information providing sites would agree without batting an eyelid that any attempt to sidestep the vital place of structure in the sites growth is doomed to fail.
Structure evolved gradually with the growth of the Internet and its use. A more elementary definition of structure would be what we knew as ‘internal linking’ but structure as it is viewed today, has a much larger dimension and scope. Today, a website defines its vision and objectives through its structure of which internal links are just a part.
Internal linking is the easiest SEO process that a website can undertake as it is based on the most essential aspect of the site which is to link its pages meaningfully. A structure is how the various pages relate to each other and the structure of links between these pages.
Any structure has to be designed in a way that the search engines can easily read the information held by the structure and visitors are able to easily navigate around the portal or website. For instance many e-commerce websites use a structure where the home page links to all the different categories that further link to their related sub-categories. The ranking of the pages reflected on the home page reduces as one goes further down through the pages in the sub-categories. However smaller websites link each web page to the other and this way the page rank flows more evenly throughout the site as it is smaller and easy to manage. There are other websites that use a mixture of the above two methods to spread the page rank around the site as evenly as possible.
From the perspective of a search engine, an important part of internal navigation is the anchor text that is used to link the pages together. In order to ensure that the link text is relevant to the information on the page the website must use keywords within the internal links as much as possible. This ensures the dual purpose of helping visitors understand what the site is all about while also informing the search engines about the structure of the website.
Structure evolved gradually with the growth of the Internet and its use. A more elementary definition of structure would be what we knew as ‘internal linking’ but structure as it is viewed today, has a much larger dimension and scope. Today, a website defines its vision and objectives through its structure of which internal links are just a part.
Internal linking is the easiest SEO process that a website can undertake as it is based on the most essential aspect of the site which is to link its pages meaningfully. A structure is how the various pages relate to each other and the structure of links between these pages.
Any structure has to be designed in a way that the search engines can easily read the information held by the structure and visitors are able to easily navigate around the portal or website. For instance many e-commerce websites use a structure where the home page links to all the different categories that further link to their related sub-categories. The ranking of the pages reflected on the home page reduces as one goes further down through the pages in the sub-categories. However smaller websites link each web page to the other and this way the page rank flows more evenly throughout the site as it is smaller and easy to manage. There are other websites that use a mixture of the above two methods to spread the page rank around the site as evenly as possible.
From the perspective of a search engine, an important part of internal navigation is the anchor text that is used to link the pages together. In order to ensure that the link text is relevant to the information on the page the website must use keywords within the internal links as much as possible. This ensures the dual purpose of helping visitors understand what the site is all about while also informing the search engines about the structure of the website.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Easy ways to increase your search engine ranking
The methods employed to increase your search engine rankings may seem like rocket science to some people, so you have probably avoided dealing with this issue. I am here to tell you - the time has come to face your website! A high search engine ranking for your website is so essential that if you have the slightest desire to actually succeed in your business, there is no way you can continue to avoid this issue.
At least 85% of people looking for goods and services on the Internet find websites through search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The idea of optimizing your websites for high search engine rankings is to attract targeted customers to your site who will be more than likely to make a purchase. The higher your page comes up in search engine results, the greater the traffic that is directed to your website. That's what search engine optimization is all about.
You can immerse yourself in all the technical information available online to figure out how to optimize your webpages to achieve higher rankings. Or you can look at a fewsimple items on your pages, make some small adjustments, and most likely see improved rankings quite rapidly. The first item you should examine is the title bar on your homepage.
The title bar is the colored bar at the top of the page. Look at the words that appear there when you access your home page. To increase search engine rankings, the words on your homepage's title bar should include the most important keywords or phrases, one of which would include your company name.
Then click on all your links and examine the title bars on the pages you access. Each title bar on every single page of your site should contain the most important keywords and phrases taken from the page itself. However, avoid very long strings of keywords, keeping them to six words or less. Avoid repeating keywords more than once in the titlebars, and make sure that identical words are not next to each other.
The next item to put under your microscope is your website content. Search engines generally list sites that containquality content rather than scintillating graphics. The text on your site must contain the most important keywords - the words that potential customers will be typing into search engines to find your site. Aim to have around 250 words on each page, but if this is not desirable due to your design, aim for at least 100 carefully chosen words. If you want to achieve a high ranking on search engines, this text is essential. However, the search engines must be able to read the text, meaning that the text must be in HTML and not graphic format.
To find out if your text is in HTML format, take your cursor and try to highlight a word or two. If you are able to do this, the text is HTML. If the text will not highlight, it is probably in graphic form. In this case, ask your webmaster to change the text into HTML format in order to increase your search engine rankings.
Next we come to what is called meta tags. I know this sounds like something out of science fiction, but it is really just simple code. Many people believe that meta tags are the key to high search engine rankings, but in reality, they only have a limited effect. Still, it's worth adding them in the event that a search engine will use meta tags in their ranking formula.To find out if your page is set up with meta tags, you must access the code. To do this, click the "view" button on the browser menu bar, and select "source." This will pull up a window revealing the underlying code that created the page. If there are meta tags, they usually appear near the top ofthe window. For example, a meta tag would read: metaname="keywords" content=. If you do not find code that reads like this, ask your webmaster to put them in. This may not do much for your search engine rankings, but any little boost helps.
Lastly, we come to the issue of link popularity. This is afactor that is extremely important in terms of search engine rankings. Almost all search engines use link popularity to rank your website. Link popularity is based on the quality of the sites you have linked to from your links page.
If you type in "free link popularity check" in a popular search engine, the search engine will then show you what sites are linked to your site. In the case that there aren't many sites linked up to yours, or that the sites that are linked up have low search engine rankings, consider launching a link popularity campaign. Essentially, this entails contacting quality sites and requesting that they exchange links with your site. Of course, this requires checking out the rankings of the websites you want to link up with. Linking to popular, quality sites not only boosts your search engine ranking, but it also directs more quality traffic to your website.
Search engine rankings are extremely important for a successful Internet marketing campaign. Before you go out and hire a search engine optimization company, try taking some of the simple steps listed above, and see if you can't boost your rankings yourself. Don't ever ignore this all-important factor in Internet marketing. Remember, the higher your search engine ranking, the more quality customers will be directed your way.
At least 85% of people looking for goods and services on the Internet find websites through search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The idea of optimizing your websites for high search engine rankings is to attract targeted customers to your site who will be more than likely to make a purchase. The higher your page comes up in search engine results, the greater the traffic that is directed to your website. That's what search engine optimization is all about.
You can immerse yourself in all the technical information available online to figure out how to optimize your webpages to achieve higher rankings. Or you can look at a fewsimple items on your pages, make some small adjustments, and most likely see improved rankings quite rapidly. The first item you should examine is the title bar on your homepage.
The title bar is the colored bar at the top of the page. Look at the words that appear there when you access your home page. To increase search engine rankings, the words on your homepage's title bar should include the most important keywords or phrases, one of which would include your company name.
Then click on all your links and examine the title bars on the pages you access. Each title bar on every single page of your site should contain the most important keywords and phrases taken from the page itself. However, avoid very long strings of keywords, keeping them to six words or less. Avoid repeating keywords more than once in the titlebars, and make sure that identical words are not next to each other.
The next item to put under your microscope is your website content. Search engines generally list sites that containquality content rather than scintillating graphics. The text on your site must contain the most important keywords - the words that potential customers will be typing into search engines to find your site. Aim to have around 250 words on each page, but if this is not desirable due to your design, aim for at least 100 carefully chosen words. If you want to achieve a high ranking on search engines, this text is essential. However, the search engines must be able to read the text, meaning that the text must be in HTML and not graphic format.
To find out if your text is in HTML format, take your cursor and try to highlight a word or two. If you are able to do this, the text is HTML. If the text will not highlight, it is probably in graphic form. In this case, ask your webmaster to change the text into HTML format in order to increase your search engine rankings.
Next we come to what is called meta tags. I know this sounds like something out of science fiction, but it is really just simple code. Many people believe that meta tags are the key to high search engine rankings, but in reality, they only have a limited effect. Still, it's worth adding them in the event that a search engine will use meta tags in their ranking formula.To find out if your page is set up with meta tags, you must access the code. To do this, click the "view" button on the browser menu bar, and select "source." This will pull up a window revealing the underlying code that created the page. If there are meta tags, they usually appear near the top ofthe window. For example, a meta tag would read: metaname="keywords" content=. If you do not find code that reads like this, ask your webmaster to put them in. This may not do much for your search engine rankings, but any little boost helps.
Lastly, we come to the issue of link popularity. This is afactor that is extremely important in terms of search engine rankings. Almost all search engines use link popularity to rank your website. Link popularity is based on the quality of the sites you have linked to from your links page.
If you type in "free link popularity check" in a popular search engine, the search engine will then show you what sites are linked to your site. In the case that there aren't many sites linked up to yours, or that the sites that are linked up have low search engine rankings, consider launching a link popularity campaign. Essentially, this entails contacting quality sites and requesting that they exchange links with your site. Of course, this requires checking out the rankings of the websites you want to link up with. Linking to popular, quality sites not only boosts your search engine ranking, but it also directs more quality traffic to your website.
Search engine rankings are extremely important for a successful Internet marketing campaign. Before you go out and hire a search engine optimization company, try taking some of the simple steps listed above, and see if you can't boost your rankings yourself. Don't ever ignore this all-important factor in Internet marketing. Remember, the higher your search engine ranking, the more quality customers will be directed your way.
Monday, February 25, 2008
5 more tips to increase Google rankings
As promised here are 5 more tips to help you get better search rankings in Google.
Build your site in HTML not Flash.
Search engine spiders have a hard time reading coding other than HTML. To avoid any confusion for the spider have your website written in HTML not Flash. If you are a large, well known company this does not play as big a role, but if you're a small company trying to make a name for yourself ensure that your programmer is using HTML. Javascript is also a problem for search engines.
Ease of site navigation.
You want a website that is easy to navigate through. The more confusing, your site is, the less likely it is that the spider will fully crawl and index all your pages. You also want to submit a sitemap for Google, so it can find and index all the pages in your website. Sitemaps are a necessity if you wish to get your all of your website indexed, and included in the search engine results.
Fresh original content.
Search engines do not want old, outdated content on their search results, so you must make sure to add new content to your site on a regular basis. Both humans and spiders like to see new content on your website. Make sure to update your content to make sure it is up to date and relevant. If you stop adding new content to your website then your rankings will start to slip.
Add a blog to your site.
A blog is a great tool for keeping visitors up to date to with your site. Blogs help promote your site and give your visitors another way to locate your website. Blogs and your blog posts also get indexed in the search engines quite quickly. Start a blog about the industry you are in, and you can quickly build up your rankings. Blogs are especially useful for adding fresh content to your site. Blog posts are seen as new content, so post in your blog at least once a week to keep your content new. Blog posts do not have to be relevant to your website, but it does help to keep the content somewhat relevant to build up and authority blog.
Make your website for humans not spiders.
This is probably one of the biggest mistakes made by newcomers to internet marketing. They write and organize their website for the search engines to achieve high rankings, but the traffic that comes from those searches does not make a purchase, because the flow of the text. You want to have a website that is easy to read and comprehend, not a site that is made for the spiders to read. Ultimately, your site is viewed by humans who hold the purchasing power. Ensure that your website is easy to read and does not have any misspellings.
Build your site in HTML not Flash.
Search engine spiders have a hard time reading coding other than HTML. To avoid any confusion for the spider have your website written in HTML not Flash. If you are a large, well known company this does not play as big a role, but if you're a small company trying to make a name for yourself ensure that your programmer is using HTML. Javascript is also a problem for search engines.
Ease of site navigation.
You want a website that is easy to navigate through. The more confusing, your site is, the less likely it is that the spider will fully crawl and index all your pages. You also want to submit a sitemap for Google, so it can find and index all the pages in your website. Sitemaps are a necessity if you wish to get your all of your website indexed, and included in the search engine results.
Fresh original content.
Search engines do not want old, outdated content on their search results, so you must make sure to add new content to your site on a regular basis. Both humans and spiders like to see new content on your website. Make sure to update your content to make sure it is up to date and relevant. If you stop adding new content to your website then your rankings will start to slip.
Add a blog to your site.
A blog is a great tool for keeping visitors up to date to with your site. Blogs help promote your site and give your visitors another way to locate your website. Blogs and your blog posts also get indexed in the search engines quite quickly. Start a blog about the industry you are in, and you can quickly build up your rankings. Blogs are especially useful for adding fresh content to your site. Blog posts are seen as new content, so post in your blog at least once a week to keep your content new. Blog posts do not have to be relevant to your website, but it does help to keep the content somewhat relevant to build up and authority blog.
Make your website for humans not spiders.
This is probably one of the biggest mistakes made by newcomers to internet marketing. They write and organize their website for the search engines to achieve high rankings, but the traffic that comes from those searches does not make a purchase, because the flow of the text. You want to have a website that is easy to read and comprehend, not a site that is made for the spiders to read. Ultimately, your site is viewed by humans who hold the purchasing power. Ensure that your website is easy to read and does not have any misspellings.
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