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Showing posts with label adsense revenue. Show all posts
Showing posts with label adsense revenue. Show all posts
Friday, November 28, 2008
Thursday, November 27, 2008
5 Steps to Take Before Optimizing Your Website
Before jumping right into search engine optimization (SEO) for your web site, there are some very important steps you must take. SEO can provide a very high return on investment - if done correctly. Wasting time and money on SEO has happened to many who have jumped in too quickly. The excitement over seeing high rankings and the perceived sales benefit from them can blind some people from some important preliminary steps. Before retaining SEO services, ask yourself these questions:
1. Have I Done My Keyword Research?
We all want great search engine rankings and traffic to our web site, but will you get highly targeted traffic or visitors who couldn't care less about your product? Choosing the best keywords and using them effectively in your web site copy is essential in order to maximize the effectiveness of a link building campaign. Services like Keyword Discovery, Wordtracker, and even the Google AdWords Keyword Tool are an SEO's best friend. They show us the current trends in every industry as well as popular and niche keywords we should be targeting. How can we properly optimize a web site if we don't know what our potential customers are searching for? An SEO will do this as part of the campaign, but it doesn't hurt to use some free services ahead of time to help them narrow their research faster.
2. Is My Web Site Content Ready to be Shown to the World?
Have you hastily created copy and added it to your web site just for the sake of "having something up there" for people to see? Have you ensured that the writing is effective and free of mistakes by getting a professional editor or copywriter to analyze it? Have you created specific landing pages for different keywords, making sure that your pages present the best information for visitors? Is the site structure and technology attractive to search engine spiders? You wouldn't open a physical storefront without doing it right so don't skimp on your online store.
3. Do I Have a Clue About Web 2.0?
Many people don't even know what Web 2.0 means let alone how the concept can help their web site. Web 2.0, to put it simply, is the shift towards more social networking and the ability to share information in a collaborative and community-based way. Making use of sites like Del.icio.us, YouTube and Myspace as well as things like blogging, podcasts, wikis and online photo albums are examples of Web 2.0. This shift is from the "old" version of the web where we had web sites acting more like brochures or business cards, with few ways of actually connecting with other users online.
So how can you harness the power of the new Internet to help your business? Work along side your SEO company by updating a blog regularly; create unique content that your competitors don't have - if you offer something different it can be "linkbait", which is something that can entice others to link to you; create articles or how-to pieces that can be syndicated on other important sites within your industry; participate in Facebook groups related to your business and share links with others on social bookmarking sites. The possibilities are seemingly endless if you take advantage of the tools that are out there.
4. Have I Installed Analytics Software?
Any reputable SEO company will insist that there be a way to track visitor behavior and statistics. But you can go one step further and install that software before the SEO even begins to get a "before and after" look at SEO efforts. My personal choice is using the free Google Analytics program - it's easy to install the small piece of code on your site, and once you get used to the online interface, the amount of information available is astounding.
5. Can I Commit Company Resources For the Duration of the SEO Campaign?
I've had clients who chose to enter into a contract for SEO services only to find a couple months into it that they don't have the cash flow necessary to continue the campaign long-term. Employee turnover has also affected SEO if the go-between leaves the company. The disconnect between you and your SEO can stall progress and at worst end up wasting previous efforts. Search engine optimization is an investment, not a quick fix. While it may seem expensive in the first few months, good SEO pays for itself before too long, especially if your sales are on high-priced items like real estate, cruises or vacation tours. The most important thing to remember is backtracking equals a loss in time and profits. Get it right the first time and follow these steps before jumping into search engine optimization.
1. Have I Done My Keyword Research?
We all want great search engine rankings and traffic to our web site, but will you get highly targeted traffic or visitors who couldn't care less about your product? Choosing the best keywords and using them effectively in your web site copy is essential in order to maximize the effectiveness of a link building campaign. Services like Keyword Discovery, Wordtracker, and even the Google AdWords Keyword Tool are an SEO's best friend. They show us the current trends in every industry as well as popular and niche keywords we should be targeting. How can we properly optimize a web site if we don't know what our potential customers are searching for? An SEO will do this as part of the campaign, but it doesn't hurt to use some free services ahead of time to help them narrow their research faster.
2. Is My Web Site Content Ready to be Shown to the World?
Have you hastily created copy and added it to your web site just for the sake of "having something up there" for people to see? Have you ensured that the writing is effective and free of mistakes by getting a professional editor or copywriter to analyze it? Have you created specific landing pages for different keywords, making sure that your pages present the best information for visitors? Is the site structure and technology attractive to search engine spiders? You wouldn't open a physical storefront without doing it right so don't skimp on your online store.
3. Do I Have a Clue About Web 2.0?
Many people don't even know what Web 2.0 means let alone how the concept can help their web site. Web 2.0, to put it simply, is the shift towards more social networking and the ability to share information in a collaborative and community-based way. Making use of sites like Del.icio.us, YouTube and Myspace as well as things like blogging, podcasts, wikis and online photo albums are examples of Web 2.0. This shift is from the "old" version of the web where we had web sites acting more like brochures or business cards, with few ways of actually connecting with other users online.
So how can you harness the power of the new Internet to help your business? Work along side your SEO company by updating a blog regularly; create unique content that your competitors don't have - if you offer something different it can be "linkbait", which is something that can entice others to link to you; create articles or how-to pieces that can be syndicated on other important sites within your industry; participate in Facebook groups related to your business and share links with others on social bookmarking sites. The possibilities are seemingly endless if you take advantage of the tools that are out there.
4. Have I Installed Analytics Software?
Any reputable SEO company will insist that there be a way to track visitor behavior and statistics. But you can go one step further and install that software before the SEO even begins to get a "before and after" look at SEO efforts. My personal choice is using the free Google Analytics program - it's easy to install the small piece of code on your site, and once you get used to the online interface, the amount of information available is astounding.
5. Can I Commit Company Resources For the Duration of the SEO Campaign?
I've had clients who chose to enter into a contract for SEO services only to find a couple months into it that they don't have the cash flow necessary to continue the campaign long-term. Employee turnover has also affected SEO if the go-between leaves the company. The disconnect between you and your SEO can stall progress and at worst end up wasting previous efforts. Search engine optimization is an investment, not a quick fix. While it may seem expensive in the first few months, good SEO pays for itself before too long, especially if your sales are on high-priced items like real estate, cruises or vacation tours. The most important thing to remember is backtracking equals a loss in time and profits. Get it right the first time and follow these steps before jumping into search engine optimization.
20 Things You Need to Know Before Optimizing Your Site
20 Things You Need to Know Before Optimizing a Web Site
One of the most important aspects of a search engine optimization project is also one of the most overlooked – preparation! There are some important steps to take in advance of optimizing your site that will make sure your SEO is successful.
Before You Start
Before you start any search engine optimization campaign, whether it's for your own site or that belonging to a client, you need to answer the following questions:
1)What is the overall motivation for optimizing this site? What do I/they hope to achieve? e.g. more sales, more subscribers, more traffic, more publicity etc.
2)What is the time-frame for this project?
3)What is the budget for this project?
4)Who will be responsible for this project? Will it be a joint or solo effort? Will it be run entirely in-house or outsourced?
Answering these questions will help you to build a framework for your SEO project and establish limitations for the size and scope of the campaign.
Get Ready: How Search Engine-Compatible is the Site Currently?
Something I find very useful before quoting on any SEO project is to produce what I call a Search Engine Compatibility Review. This is where I carry out a detailed overview and analysis of a site's search engine compatibility in terms of HTML design, page extensions, link popularity, title and META tags, body text, target keywords, ALT IMG tags, page load time and other design elements that can impact search engine indexing.
I then provide a detailed report to potential clients with recommendations based on my findings. It just helps sort out in my mind what design elements need tweaking to make the site as search engine-friendly as possible. It also helps marketing staff prove to an often stubborn programming department (or vice versa!) that SEO is necessary. You might consider preparing something similar for your own site or clients.
Get Set: Requirements Gathering
Next, you need to establish the project requirements, so you can tailor the SEO campaign to you or your client's exact needs. For those of you servicing clients, this information is often required before you are able to quote accurately.
To determine your project requirements, you need to have the following questions answered:
1)What technology was used to build the site? (i.e. Flash, PHP, frames, Cold Fusion, JavaScript, Flat HTML etc)
2)What are the file extensions of the pages? (i.e. .htm, .php, .cfm etc)
3)Does the site contain database driven content? If so, will the URLs contain query strings? e.g. www.site.com/longpagename?source=123444fgge3212, (containing "?" symbols), or does the site use parameter workarounds to remove the query strings? (the latter is more search engine friendly).
4)Are there at least 250 words of text on the home page and other pages to be optimized?
5)How does the navigation work? Does it use text links or graphical links or JavaScript drop-down menus?
6)Approximately how many pages does the site contain? How many of these will be opt
imized?
7)Does the site have a site map or will it require one? Does the site have an XML sitemap submitted to Google Sitemaps?
8)What is the current link popularity of the site?
9)What is the approximate Google PageRank of the site? Would it benefit from link building?
10)Do I have the ability to edit the source code directly? Or will I need to hand-over the optimized code to programmers for integration?
11)Do I have permission to alter the visible content of the site?
12)What are the products/services that the site promotes? (e.g. widgets, mobile phones, hire cars etc.)
13)What are the site's geographical target markets? Are they global? Country specific? State specific? Town specific?
14)What are the site's demographic target markets? (e.g. young urban females, working mothers, single parents etc.)
15)What are 20 search keywords or phrases that I think my/my client's target markets will use to find the site in the search engines?
16)Who are my/my client's major competitors online? What are their URLs? What keywords are they targeting?
17)Who are the stake-holders of this site? How will I report to them?
18)Do I have access to site traffic logs or statistics to enable me to track visitor activity during the campaign? Specifically, what visitor activity will I be tracking?
19)How do I plan on tracking my or my client's conversion trends and increased rankings in the search engines?
20)What are my/my client's expectations for the optimization project? Are they realistic?
Answers to the first 10 questions above will determine the complexity of optimization required. For example, if the site pages currently have little text on them, you know you'll need to integrate more text to make the site compatible with search engines and include adequate target keywords. If the site currently uses frames, you will need to rebuild the pages without frames or create special No-Frames tags to make sure the site can be indexed, and so on.
This initial analysis will help you to scope the time and costs involved in advance. For those of you optimizing client sites, obtaining accurate answers to these questions BEFORE quoting is absolutely crucial. Otherwise you can find yourself in the middle of a project that you have severely under-quoted for.
The remainder of questions are to establish in advance the who, what, where, when, why and how of the optimization project. This will help you determine the most logical keywords and phrases to target, as well as which search engines to submit the site to.
For those of you optimizing web sites for a living, you might consider developing a questionnaire that you can give clients to complete to ensure you tailor the web site optimization to their exact needs.
Go!
So now you are clear about your motivations for optimizing the site, you know more about the target markets, you know how compatible the existing site is with search engines and how much work is involved in the search engine optimization process. You're ready to tackle the job!
One of the most important aspects of a search engine optimization project is also one of the most overlooked – preparation! There are some important steps to take in advance of optimizing your site that will make sure your SEO is successful.
Before You Start
Before you start any search engine optimization campaign, whether it's for your own site or that belonging to a client, you need to answer the following questions:
1)What is the overall motivation for optimizing this site? What do I/they hope to achieve? e.g. more sales, more subscribers, more traffic, more publicity etc.
2)What is the time-frame for this project?
3)What is the budget for this project?
4)Who will be responsible for this project? Will it be a joint or solo effort? Will it be run entirely in-house or outsourced?
Answering these questions will help you to build a framework for your SEO project and establish limitations for the size and scope of the campaign.
Get Ready: How Search Engine-Compatible is the Site Currently?
Something I find very useful before quoting on any SEO project is to produce what I call a Search Engine Compatibility Review. This is where I carry out a detailed overview and analysis of a site's search engine compatibility in terms of HTML design, page extensions, link popularity, title and META tags, body text, target keywords, ALT IMG tags, page load time and other design elements that can impact search engine indexing.
I then provide a detailed report to potential clients with recommendations based on my findings. It just helps sort out in my mind what design elements need tweaking to make the site as search engine-friendly as possible. It also helps marketing staff prove to an often stubborn programming department (or vice versa!) that SEO is necessary. You might consider preparing something similar for your own site or clients.
Get Set: Requirements Gathering
Next, you need to establish the project requirements, so you can tailor the SEO campaign to you or your client's exact needs. For those of you servicing clients, this information is often required before you are able to quote accurately.
To determine your project requirements, you need to have the following questions answered:
1)What technology was used to build the site? (i.e. Flash, PHP, frames, Cold Fusion, JavaScript, Flat HTML etc)
2)What are the file extensions of the pages? (i.e. .htm, .php, .cfm etc)
3)Does the site contain database driven content? If so, will the URLs contain query strings? e.g. www.site.com/longpagename?source=123444fgge3212, (containing "?" symbols), or does the site use parameter workarounds to remove the query strings? (the latter is more search engine friendly).
4)Are there at least 250 words of text on the home page and other pages to be optimized?
5)How does the navigation work? Does it use text links or graphical links or JavaScript drop-down menus?
6)Approximately how many pages does the site contain? How many of these will be opt
imized?
7)Does the site have a site map or will it require one? Does the site have an XML sitemap submitted to Google Sitemaps?
8)What is the current link popularity of the site?
9)What is the approximate Google PageRank of the site? Would it benefit from link building?
10)Do I have the ability to edit the source code directly? Or will I need to hand-over the optimized code to programmers for integration?
11)Do I have permission to alter the visible content of the site?
12)What are the products/services that the site promotes? (e.g. widgets, mobile phones, hire cars etc.)
13)What are the site's geographical target markets? Are they global? Country specific? State specific? Town specific?
14)What are the site's demographic target markets? (e.g. young urban females, working mothers, single parents etc.)
15)What are 20 search keywords or phrases that I think my/my client's target markets will use to find the site in the search engines?
16)Who are my/my client's major competitors online? What are their URLs? What keywords are they targeting?
17)Who are the stake-holders of this site? How will I report to them?
18)Do I have access to site traffic logs or statistics to enable me to track visitor activity during the campaign? Specifically, what visitor activity will I be tracking?
19)How do I plan on tracking my or my client's conversion trends and increased rankings in the search engines?
20)What are my/my client's expectations for the optimization project? Are they realistic?
Answers to the first 10 questions above will determine the complexity of optimization required. For example, if the site pages currently have little text on them, you know you'll need to integrate more text to make the site compatible with search engines and include adequate target keywords. If the site currently uses frames, you will need to rebuild the pages without frames or create special No-Frames tags to make sure the site can be indexed, and so on.
This initial analysis will help you to scope the time and costs involved in advance. For those of you optimizing client sites, obtaining accurate answers to these questions BEFORE quoting is absolutely crucial. Otherwise you can find yourself in the middle of a project that you have severely under-quoted for.
The remainder of questions are to establish in advance the who, what, where, when, why and how of the optimization project. This will help you determine the most logical keywords and phrases to target, as well as which search engines to submit the site to.
For those of you optimizing web sites for a living, you might consider developing a questionnaire that you can give clients to complete to ensure you tailor the web site optimization to their exact needs.
Go!
So now you are clear about your motivations for optimizing the site, you know more about the target markets, you know how compatible the existing site is with search engines and how much work is involved in the search engine optimization process. You're ready to tackle the job!
SEO For Topping Search Engine Results
In case you don't know, SEO actually stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it is the near-science of getting websites to the top of search engine results.
Although there are many other search engines, Google, Yahoo! and MSN are the top three most used search engines today. In fact, they are practically the only search engines that matter; today, most of the traffic coming into websites are being referred by these search engines. So if you want your website to sell, you better get to the top of search engines - on top one on page one. Studies have shown that, in general, Internet users only click on the top two search engine results.
Different search engines actually have different algorithms in generating results, but in actual SEO practice, it has been found that you improve your ranking on the search engine results across the three major search engines by keeping the SEO basics in mind, and implementing strategies related to them.
Keyword Density
Search results place a premium on a website's relevance to the keyword being searched for. It is not anymore possible to pull up porn site results on searches for "best hotels".
Search engines determine a website's relevance partly through keyword density, which is the percentage of a keyword in the total content of a web page - from a page's meta information (title, description, and keywords) to the actual website copy visible to visitors. Increase your keyword density by writing accordingly, but keep the density from between 3% to 7% or you will risk of being flagged for spamming.
Website copy
Websites are made for a human user, and not for a search engines and its spiders. When your website copy is bad, visitors will click on the BACK button almost as soon as they land.
Bad news, since visitor stay does matter. You rankings decrease when your visitors click on the "back" button within five seconds of landing on your website.
Link building
Link building is all about getting other websites to link to your own. To get the most of link building, put your keywords in the anchor text information you're going to send to the other website.
Anchor text is the text on the other website's that links and points to your website. If you sell coffee beans and you have a link to a seller of coffee maker, put your keywords (like "coffee beans") on the anchor text found on the other website.
Frames and Flash
SEO specialists will always advise against using frames and flash in website design. Why? Because the text within them cannot be crawled by search engine spiders.
Visitor Traffic
To increase your ranking in the search engine results is to make active efforts to drive visitors to your site. You can do this by running a Google AdWords campaign or an email campaign. You can also do forums posting, launch an online press release campaign, or write blogs. Make sure though that you put in active
Although there are many other search engines, Google, Yahoo! and MSN are the top three most used search engines today. In fact, they are practically the only search engines that matter; today, most of the traffic coming into websites are being referred by these search engines. So if you want your website to sell, you better get to the top of search engines - on top one on page one. Studies have shown that, in general, Internet users only click on the top two search engine results.
Different search engines actually have different algorithms in generating results, but in actual SEO practice, it has been found that you improve your ranking on the search engine results across the three major search engines by keeping the SEO basics in mind, and implementing strategies related to them.
Keyword Density
Search results place a premium on a website's relevance to the keyword being searched for. It is not anymore possible to pull up porn site results on searches for "best hotels".
Search engines determine a website's relevance partly through keyword density, which is the percentage of a keyword in the total content of a web page - from a page's meta information (title, description, and keywords) to the actual website copy visible to visitors. Increase your keyword density by writing accordingly, but keep the density from between 3% to 7% or you will risk of being flagged for spamming.
Website copy
Websites are made for a human user, and not for a search engines and its spiders. When your website copy is bad, visitors will click on the BACK button almost as soon as they land.
Bad news, since visitor stay does matter. You rankings decrease when your visitors click on the "back" button within five seconds of landing on your website.
Link building
Link building is all about getting other websites to link to your own. To get the most of link building, put your keywords in the anchor text information you're going to send to the other website.
Anchor text is the text on the other website's that links and points to your website. If you sell coffee beans and you have a link to a seller of coffee maker, put your keywords (like "coffee beans") on the anchor text found on the other website.
Frames and Flash
SEO specialists will always advise against using frames and flash in website design. Why? Because the text within them cannot be crawled by search engine spiders.
Visitor Traffic
To increase your ranking in the search engine results is to make active efforts to drive visitors to your site. You can do this by running a Google AdWords campaign or an email campaign. You can also do forums posting, launch an online press release campaign, or write blogs. Make sure though that you put in active
WHY SEO IS NOT ENOUGH
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a highly sought after option for website owners who know they need to have higher search engine rankings to succeed online.
In fact, entire businesses have been developed just to provide this form of “internet marketing” to those who desperately need it.
Although it is true that SEO is a highly technical, ever changing, sometimes secretive discipline - it is by no means the ONLY thing a website owners should be doing to succeed online.
Some would have you believe that optimizing your website for the search engines will drive hoardes of traffic directly to you — however that is simply NOT the case.
Search Engine Optimization accounts for approximately 40% of the overall success of your website, and even less if your website was not originally designed with SEO in mind.
If you currently have an existing website which is graphics intensive then SEO accounts for even less of your success simply because pictures and graphics actually give your website less effectiveness in the search engine results pages.
So, you may be asking - if SEO is 40% or less of my overall website success, what accounts for the remaining 60% or more?
The answer; off page factors such as inbound links make up the remaining effectiveness of your website in the search engine results.
In fact, entire businesses have been developed just to provide this form of “internet marketing” to those who desperately need it.
Although it is true that SEO is a highly technical, ever changing, sometimes secretive discipline - it is by no means the ONLY thing a website owners should be doing to succeed online.
Some would have you believe that optimizing your website for the search engines will drive hoardes of traffic directly to you — however that is simply NOT the case.
Search Engine Optimization accounts for approximately 40% of the overall success of your website, and even less if your website was not originally designed with SEO in mind.
If you currently have an existing website which is graphics intensive then SEO accounts for even less of your success simply because pictures and graphics actually give your website less effectiveness in the search engine results pages.
So, you may be asking - if SEO is 40% or less of my overall website success, what accounts for the remaining 60% or more?
The answer; off page factors such as inbound links make up the remaining effectiveness of your website in the search engine results.
Five and a Half Ways to Amp Up Your Search EngineOptimization
Five and a Half Ways to Amp Up Your Search EngineOptimization
Statistics show that 85% of pages visited on the Internet come from people who have gotten there from a search engine. Statistically, people look first at the top of the first page of the regular search results, then the bottom, and then they go to the sponsored listings.
There is an art and science to being ranked highly on the search engines. The science is formatting the pages with the right meta tags and submitting them in the right way to the search engines. The art is to make the site look and read normal in spite of filling it with key words.
Here are five and a half ways to get a higher ranking and more visitors:
1. Pick the right Key Words and Phrases
These are the words and phrases that people will put into search engines to try to find your product, business or organization. Having good key words and phrases is foundational to have good optimization. This takes research using such tools at Wordtracker and Overture’s Keyword Suggestion Tool. They give you a good idea of what people are searching for and what you should focus on.
2. Use Good Header Tags
Header tags are hidden in the code within your Web page. The most important one is the "title" tag, which isn’t considered a META tag. It tells what’s within your page and it’s important to have your keyphrases in it. It is also good to have keyphrases in your "description" META tag, though it doesn’t rank nearly as high as the "title" tag.
3. Use Keyphrases in Your Visible Page Title
Provide a unique title to each page on your site that is chock full of key words and phrases. Search engines like this because it means that there is a higher probability that your site is a good match for what people are looking for. This is should be placed within the H1 tag (top heading) of your page and is visible to the visitor. It also pays to have your keyphrases in subtitles on the page.
4. Provide Plenty of Content on Your Site
Shoot to have at least 450 characters on your page. Concentrate on putting key words and phrases in the first paragraph and last paragraphs.
5. Secure a Lot of Related Incoming Links
The more sites linked to your site, the higher you will be ranked by the search engines. These links can be from strategic partners, vendors, directories or other types of sites with whom you exchange links.
If you are a web site developer, put in your contract that you are going to put a developer’s link at the bottom of the site, such as, "Web site design by Green Chair Marketing Group," with an active link to your site. This will help your site grow in its link popularity.
5.5 Keep Optimizing Your Site
The more content on your site, the better. I suggest adding a couple pages a month, whether it’s case studies, more product information, testimonials, articles, press releases, etc. If you add just five new pages a month, you will have 60 new pages by the end of the year, and over 100 pages by the end of the second year.
You are bound to catch some people you would have missed because there is more content to choose from. And your site will be more highly ranked by Google, because they highly weigh sites that have more content.
While you’re at it, continue to get relevant links coming into your site. Google loves incoming links. And you might have people click through to your site from these other places.
If you don’t have time to work on the optimization or would feel more comfortable having someone else do it, consider strongly hiring a professional to do your search engine optimization. That way you can focus your energies on sales or creating more and better product.
One caveat, I would stay away from companies that initiate contact with you through emails or phone calls. They often use techniques that can get your severely penalized by the search engines. Ask people you know who have been successful in their search engine positioning who they use.
Statistics show that 85% of pages visited on the Internet come from people who have gotten there from a search engine. Statistically, people look first at the top of the first page of the regular search results, then the bottom, and then they go to the sponsored listings.
There is an art and science to being ranked highly on the search engines. The science is formatting the pages with the right meta tags and submitting them in the right way to the search engines. The art is to make the site look and read normal in spite of filling it with key words.
Here are five and a half ways to get a higher ranking and more visitors:
1. Pick the right Key Words and Phrases
These are the words and phrases that people will put into search engines to try to find your product, business or organization. Having good key words and phrases is foundational to have good optimization. This takes research using such tools at Wordtracker and Overture’s Keyword Suggestion Tool. They give you a good idea of what people are searching for and what you should focus on.
2. Use Good Header Tags
Header tags are hidden in the code within your Web page. The most important one is the "title" tag, which isn’t considered a META tag. It tells what’s within your page and it’s important to have your keyphrases in it. It is also good to have keyphrases in your "description" META tag, though it doesn’t rank nearly as high as the "title" tag.
3. Use Keyphrases in Your Visible Page Title
Provide a unique title to each page on your site that is chock full of key words and phrases. Search engines like this because it means that there is a higher probability that your site is a good match for what people are looking for. This is should be placed within the H1 tag (top heading) of your page and is visible to the visitor. It also pays to have your keyphrases in subtitles on the page.
4. Provide Plenty of Content on Your Site
Shoot to have at least 450 characters on your page. Concentrate on putting key words and phrases in the first paragraph and last paragraphs.
5. Secure a Lot of Related Incoming Links
The more sites linked to your site, the higher you will be ranked by the search engines. These links can be from strategic partners, vendors, directories or other types of sites with whom you exchange links.
If you are a web site developer, put in your contract that you are going to put a developer’s link at the bottom of the site, such as, "Web site design by Green Chair Marketing Group," with an active link to your site. This will help your site grow in its link popularity.
5.5 Keep Optimizing Your Site
The more content on your site, the better. I suggest adding a couple pages a month, whether it’s case studies, more product information, testimonials, articles, press releases, etc. If you add just five new pages a month, you will have 60 new pages by the end of the year, and over 100 pages by the end of the second year.
You are bound to catch some people you would have missed because there is more content to choose from. And your site will be more highly ranked by Google, because they highly weigh sites that have more content.
While you’re at it, continue to get relevant links coming into your site. Google loves incoming links. And you might have people click through to your site from these other places.
If you don’t have time to work on the optimization or would feel more comfortable having someone else do it, consider strongly hiring a professional to do your search engine optimization. That way you can focus your energies on sales or creating more and better product.
One caveat, I would stay away from companies that initiate contact with you through emails or phone calls. They often use techniques that can get your severely penalized by the search engines. Ask people you know who have been successful in their search engine positioning who they use.
Importance of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for your Website
SEO and Your Web Site
We all know the importance of having a Web site rank well in search engine results for searches on specific keywords/phrases. If your Web site doesn’t have a page appearing in the top 10 search engine result positions (SERPs) the chances of someone clicking on your listing, and actually visiting your site, drop dramatically. If you’re not in the top 20 you have almost no chance that someone will scan through the SERPs that far to find your page.
The basics of code optimization are just sound HTML coding practices; when followed, they go a long way toward SEO.
Optimizing your site and content for a search engine, for a better ranking in SERPs, is known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), yet many Web developers/designers either don’t take time to code a site properly or don’t know how to do proper SEO. The basics of code optimization are just sound HTML coding practices; when followed, they go a long way toward SEO.
There is a lot you can do to optimize your Web site for search engines from the code level. Where you can also affect things, and this is beyond the work of the developer/designer, is in the actual content. Understanding how to tag the content, and where to place it in the HTML, is critical. Here is a basic outline of SEO best practices.
Understand the Search Engines and Search Engine Spiders
So how does your site get into a search engine? A search engine obtains your URL either by you submitting your site directly to the search engine or by others linking to your site. Then, at a time of its choosing, a search engine sends out its spider (or “bot”) to visit your site.
Once there, the spider starts reading all the text in the body of the page, including markup elements, all links to other pages and to external sites, plus elements from the page head including some meta tags (depending on the search engine) and the title tag.
It then copies this information back to its central database for indexing at a later date which can be up to two or three months later.
The spider then follows the links on the page, repeating the same process. Spiders are, for lack of a better term, dumb. They can only follow the most basic HTML code. If you’ve encased a link in a fancy JavaScript that the spider won’t understand, the spider will simply ignore both the JavaScript and the link. The same thing applies to forms; spiders can’t fill out forms and click “submit.”
To get an understanding of what a spider sees, try accessing your site with a Lynx browser from a Unix server. Lynx is non-graphical, does not support JavaScripts, and will display only text and regular a href tags. This is what the spider can see and therefore index. Does your page work without graphics or JavaScript? If no, then the spidering won’t work either and you’d better head back the drawing board.
Once the SE has all your content in its database, it runs an algorithm (a mathematical formula) against the content. These algorithms are unique to each SE and are constantly changing, but, in essence, all the search engines are looking for the important words on your page (based on word density—how often a word or phrase is used in relation to the total amount of text) and they assign a value to these words based on the code surrounding the words.
In addition to content, the search engine looks for what other sites, or pages on the same site, are linking to that page. The more links to a given page, the more important that page is. Getting other sites to link to your site is very important, but not part of optimizing your site and will be covered in a future column. From a site optimization standpoint, make sure you link to your important pages from more than just the index page (e.g., create a primary navigation that appears on all pages.)
Tip 1
The first rule of SEO is not to design your site in such a way that the code prevents a spider from being able to index it. This means avoiding pages which are 100% graphics and no text, such as pages that contain all images, or are Flash-only. Furthermore, if the first thing a user encounters is a log-in page, before being able to see the site’s content, then that’s what a spider will see and it won’t go any further, either.
If you’re planning to build a Web site entirely in Flash, DON’T. If you have no choice, then read my previous column, Search Engine Optimization and Non-HTML Sites.
Tip 2
To find out what a spider sees on your site, run a spider simulator on a given page. The simulator will show you what text the spider sees and what links it finds. There are many good ones on the market at various prices. If you’re looking for something that’s free, I’d suggest Search Engine Spider Simulator.
Tip 3
Each Web site should have a file called robots.txt. This file tells the spiders what directories they should not spider. Make sure this file is present and that it gives the appropriate permissions to the spiders. This includes access to content and to CSS.
For more information on the robot.txt file, see: Guide to the Robots Exclusion Protocol.
Page Structure
Once you’ve built an SE-friendly Web site, you then need to be sure each page is also SE-friendly. As I said earlier, good HTML structure is the foundation for building an SEO Web page. There are two primary areas of a Web page. The area contained between the tags and that which is contained between the tags. What information you place in these areas has a huge impact on how a page is indexed and, to a certain degree, what will appear in the SE results page.
When designing your page, or placing content on your page, remember that spiders read like people. They go from left to right and from top to bottom (though this may be different for other languages.) They also feel that the most important information is located at the top of the page. If it’s important, why would you place it at the bottom? When reading specific tags (title, h1, h2, etc.) search engines value words to the left more highly than words to the right.
The Title Tag
Let’s start at one of the first elements in a Web page—the title tag (
Why is this tag so important? First of all, it is used by every major search engine as a key indicator of the page’s content, and, second, it used by the search engine as the first line in the SERPs.
Give this tag the consideration it deserves.
Tip 4
Determine the main topic of the page and use it as the title. A page about high-performance running shoes from manufacturer XYZ shouldn’t have the title “XYZ”—it should have a title something like “High-performance Running Shoes.” If the brand is important, then add it to the end of the line like this: “High Performance Running Shoes - XYZ.”
The Meta Tags
Over the years, various meta tags have come in and gone out of favor with search engines. One of those which has lost its value is the “keywords” meta tag. Most search engines say they don’t look at it anymore but if you have time to create one, go ahead and do so. It doesn’t hurt.
The only meta tag that all search engines presently acknowledge is the "description" meta tag. Once again, this tag should be unique to each page and match the content on the page itself.
The proper format for the description meta tag is, for example:
.
Tip 5
Write a unique description for each page. If you use the same meta tag across all pages, the search engine will pick up on this and potentially ignore the content of the meta tag or possibly the entire page.
JavaScript
We’re all familiar with loading the top of the HTML page with all sorts of JavaScript functions that are necessary for various page features. This includes, but is not limited to: mouse-overs, form validators, cookie checkers, etc. To search engine spiders, this is clutter, and, while they ignore it, they still need to wade through all that code to find the real content of the page. Many spiders have timeouts or maximum character counts associated with them—if they have to wade through too much junk, they’ll abandon their spidering and move on to another site. So avoid making your pages too top heavy by placing too much code between the tags.
Google's Search Engine Optimization
google_ad_section_start -->Search engine optimization is often about making small modifications to parts of your website. When viewed individually, these changes might seem like incremental improvements, but when combined with other optimizations, they could have a noticeable impact on your site's user experience and erformance in organic search results. You're likely already familiar with many of the topics in this guide, because they're essential ingredients for any webpage, but you may not be making the most out of them.
Even though this guide's title contains the words "search engine", we'd like to say that you should base your optimization decisions first and foremost on what's best for the visitors of your site. They're the main consumers of your content and are using search engines to find your work. Focusing too
hard on specific tweaks to gain ranking in the organic results of search engines may not deliver the desired results. Search engine optimization is about putting your site's best foot forward when it comes to visibility in search engines. An example may help our explanations, so we've created a fictitious website to follow throughout the guide. For each topic, we've fleshed out enough information about the site to illustrate the point being
covered. Here's some background information about the site we'll use:
• Website/business name: "Brandon's Baseball Cards"
• Domain name: brandonsbaseballcards.com
• Focus: Online-only baseball card sales, price guides, articles, and news content
• Size: Small, ~250 pages
Create unique, accurate page titles
A title tag tells both users and search engines what the topic of a particular page is. The tag should be placed within the tag of the HTML document. Ideally, you should create a unique title for each page on your site.
The title for your homepage can list the name of your website/business and could include other bits of important information like the physical location of the business or maybe a few of its main focuses or offerings.
Titles for deeper pages on your site should accurately describe the focus of that particular page and also might include your site or business name.
Make use of the "description" meta tag
A page's description meta tag gives Google and other search engines a summary of what the page is about. Whereas a page's title may be a few words or a phrase, a page's description meta tag might be a sentence or two or a short paragraph. Google Webmaster Tools provides a handy content
analysis section that'll tell you about any description meta tags that are either too short, long, or duplicated too many times (the same information is also shown for tags). Like the tag, the description meta tag is placed within the tag of your HTML document.
Improve the structure of your URLs
Creating descriptive categories and filenames for the documents on your website can not only help you keep your site better organized, but it could also lead to better crawling of your documents by Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, Version 1.1, published 13 November 2008
search engines. Also, it can create easier, "friendlier" URLs for those that want to link to your content.
Visitors may be intimidated by extremely long and cryptic URLs that contain few recognizable words.
Make your site easier to navigate
The navigation of a website is important in helping visitors quickly find the content they want. It can also help search engines understand what content the webmaster thinks is important. Although Google's search results are provided at a page level, Google also likes to have a sense of what role a
page plays in the bigger picture of the site.
All sites have a home or "root" page, which is usually the most frequented page on the site and the starting place of navigation for many visitors. Unless your site has only a handful of pages, you should think about how visitors will go from a general page (your root page) to a page containing more specific content. Do you have enough pages around a specific topic area that it would make sense to create a page describing these related pages (e.g. root page -> related topic listing -> specific topic)? Do you have hundreds of different products that need to be classified under multiple category and subcategory pages?
Offer quality content and services
Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factors discussed here. Users know good content when they see it and will likely want to direct other users to it. This could be through blog posts, social media services, email, forums, or other means.
Organic or word-of-mouth buzz is what helps build your site's reputation with both users and Google, and it rarely comes without quality content.
Write better anchor text
Anchor text is the clickable text that users will see as a result of a link, and is placed within the anchor tag .
This text tells users and Google something about the page you're linking to. Links on your page may be internal—pointing to other pages on your site—or external—leading to content on other sites. In either of these cases, the better your anchor text is, the easier it is for users to navigate and for
Google to understand what the page you're linking to is about.
Use heading tags appropriately
Heading tags (not to be confused with the HTML tag or HTTP headers) are used to present structure on the page to users. There are six sizes of heading tags, beginning with, the least important.
Even though this guide's title contains the words "search engine", we'd like to say that you should base your optimization decisions first and foremost on what's best for the visitors of your site. They're the main consumers of your content and are using search engines to find your work. Focusing too
hard on specific tweaks to gain ranking in the organic results of search engines may not deliver the desired results. Search engine optimization is about putting your site's best foot forward when it comes to visibility in search engines. An example may help our explanations, so we've created a fictitious website to follow throughout the guide. For each topic, we've fleshed out enough information about the site to illustrate the point being
covered. Here's some background information about the site we'll use:
• Website/business name: "Brandon's Baseball Cards"
• Domain name: brandonsbaseballcards.com
• Focus: Online-only baseball card sales, price guides, articles, and news content
• Size: Small, ~250 pages
Create unique, accurate page titles
A title tag tells both users and search engines what the topic of a particular page is. The
The title for your homepage can list the name of your website/business and could include other bits of important information like the physical location of the business or maybe a few of its main focuses or offerings.
Titles for deeper pages on your site should accurately describe the focus of that particular page and also might include your site or business name.
Make use of the "description" meta tag
A page's description meta tag gives Google and other search engines a summary of what the page is about. Whereas a page's title may be a few words or a phrase, a page's description meta tag might be a sentence or two or a short paragraph. Google Webmaster Tools provides a handy content
analysis section that'll tell you about any description meta tags that are either too short, long, or duplicated too many times (the same information is also shown for
Improve the structure of your URLs
Creating descriptive categories and filenames for the documents on your website can not only help you keep your site better organized, but it could also lead to better crawling of your documents by Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, Version 1.1, published 13 November 2008
search engines. Also, it can create easier, "friendlier" URLs for those that want to link to your content.
Visitors may be intimidated by extremely long and cryptic URLs that contain few recognizable words.
Make your site easier to navigate
The navigation of a website is important in helping visitors quickly find the content they want. It can also help search engines understand what content the webmaster thinks is important. Although Google's search results are provided at a page level, Google also likes to have a sense of what role a
page plays in the bigger picture of the site.
All sites have a home or "root" page, which is usually the most frequented page on the site and the starting place of navigation for many visitors. Unless your site has only a handful of pages, you should think about how visitors will go from a general page (your root page) to a page containing more specific content. Do you have enough pages around a specific topic area that it would make sense to create a page describing these related pages (e.g. root page -> related topic listing -> specific topic)? Do you have hundreds of different products that need to be classified under multiple category and subcategory pages?
Offer quality content and services
Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factors discussed here. Users know good content when they see it and will likely want to direct other users to it. This could be through blog posts, social media services, email, forums, or other means.
Organic or word-of-mouth buzz is what helps build your site's reputation with both users and Google, and it rarely comes without quality content.
Write better anchor text
Anchor text is the clickable text that users will see as a result of a link, and is placed within the anchor tag .
This text tells users and Google something about the page you're linking to. Links on your page may be internal—pointing to other pages on your site—or external—leading to content on other sites. In either of these cases, the better your anchor text is, the easier it is for users to navigate and for
Google to understand what the page you're linking to is about.
Use heading tags appropriately
Heading tags (not to be confused with the HTML tag or HTTP headers) are used to present structure on the page to users. There are six sizes of heading tags, beginning with
, the most important, and ending with
, the least important.
Optimize your use of images
Images may seem like a straightforward component of your site, but you can optimize your use of them. All images can have a distinct filename and "alt" attribute, both of which you should take advantage of. The "alt" attribute allows you to specify alternative text for the image if it cannot be displayed for some reason.
Make effective use of robots.txt
A "robots.txt" file tells search engines whether they can access and therefore crawl parts of your site. This file, which must be amed "robots.txt", is placed in the root directory of your site.
Be aware of rel="nofollow" for links Setting the value of the "rel" attribute of a link to "nofollow" will tell Google that certain links on your site shouldn't be followed or pass your page's reputation to the pages linked to. Nofollowing a link is adding rel="nofollow" inside of the link's anchor tag.
Promote your website in the right ways
While most of the links to your site will be gained gradually, as people discover your content through search or other ways and link to it, Google understands that you'd like to let others know about the hard work you've put into your content. Effectively promoting your new content will lead to faster discovery by those who are interested in the same subject. As with most points covered in this document, taking these recommendations to an extreme could actually harm the reputation of your site.
Make use of free webmaster tools
Major search engines, including Google, provide free tools for webmasters. Google's Webmaster Tools help webmasters better control how Google interacts with their websites and get useful information from Google about their site. Using Webmaster Tools won't help your site get preferential
treatment; however, it can help you identify issues that, if addressed, can help your site perform better in search results. With the service, webmasters can:
Take advantage of web analytics services
If you've improved the crawling and indexing of your site using Google Webmasters Tools or other services, you're probably curious about the traffic coming to your site. Web analytics programs like Google Analytics are a valuable source of insight for this. You can use these to:
• get insight into how users reach and behave on your site
• discover the most popular content on your site
• measure the impact of optimizations you make to your site (e.g. did changing those title and description meta tags improve traffic from search engines?)
A Search Engine Without Cookies
A Search Engine Without Cookies
That's right, hakia, a new "meaning-based" search engine, is cookieless. hakia's COO, Melek Pulatkonak, writes on the company's blog:
"hakia.com does NOT place a cookie on your PC when you search at our site. We are the very first search engine not to do so. We will always ask your permission if and when we will have to put a cookie in your PC or cross the privacy line."
What does this mean for Web surfers? It means that hakia, unlike other search engines, will not track your search history or monitor your search behavior. This issues seem to be of major importance to many Web surfers, and hakia is breaking out of pack to provide users with more privacy.
Overall, hakia's approach to search promises to be revolutionary. The company's search strategy focuses on the development of a "natural language" technology that returns search results based on meaning, assimilating the human cognitive process involved with searching. Because of this, hakia does not rely on popularity or indexes like many other search engines.
When I met Pulatkonak and hakia's founder and CEO, Dr. Riza C. Berkan, at Web 2.0 Summit back in November, I had the opportunity to test out the new search engine, now in its Beta-14 release. I found that the search results were arranged in a manner that would be useful for heavy researchers, such as lawyers, reporters, and people in the medical field. For instance, when I asked the search engine, "What is Cancer?" The results came back in categories, such as "Headlines," "Symptoms and Diagnostics," "Healthcare Facilities and Finding a Physician," "Organizations," and so on. The manner in which the results were organized reminded me of how people think when they're looking for something and to obtain very specific information about that topic they're interested in. It seemed to be for people who don't want to put in a bunch of complicated term combinations, such as "cancer+symptoms," in order to find their results. It gives people the opportunity to ask very specific and simple questions and find the answers they need...fast. And while you're thinking that may be Ask.com's approach, it's not. Just look at these results from Ask next to these results for the same question asked of hakia. These are very different search experiences.
It seems hakia has found an innovative solution to search, though still perhaps not the only solution.
Either way, hakia is on to something big in terms of putting its user's first. The search engine's privacy policy of not following you during your searches and its "meaning based" engine both put the power of search within the people searching instead of the search engine itself.
Do you think hakia can become a successful search engine business although the company isn't following a traditional path? Has privacy become as major an issue as hakia's COO states, and will it cause other search engine companies to go cookieless as well?
View our slideshow Search Engine Showdown to learn more about how search technology has evolved over time.
"hakia.com does NOT place a cookie on your PC when you search at our site. We are the very first search engine not to do so. We will always ask your permission if and when we will have to put a cookie in your PC or cross the privacy line."
What does this mean for Web surfers? It means that hakia, unlike other search engines, will not track your search history or monitor your search behavior. This issues seem to be of major importance to many Web surfers, and hakia is breaking out of pack to provide users with more privacy.
Overall, hakia's approach to search promises to be revolutionary. The company's search strategy focuses on the development of a "natural language" technology that returns search results based on meaning, assimilating the human cognitive process involved with searching. Because of this, hakia does not rely on popularity or indexes like many other search engines.
When I met Pulatkonak and hakia's founder and CEO, Dr. Riza C. Berkan, at Web 2.0 Summit back in November, I had the opportunity to test out the new search engine, now in its Beta-14 release. I found that the search results were arranged in a manner that would be useful for heavy researchers, such as lawyers, reporters, and people in the medical field. For instance, when I asked the search engine, "What is Cancer?" The results came back in categories, such as "Headlines," "Symptoms and Diagnostics," "Healthcare Facilities and Finding a Physician," "Organizations," and so on. The manner in which the results were organized reminded me of how people think when they're looking for something and to obtain very specific information about that topic they're interested in. It seemed to be for people who don't want to put in a bunch of complicated term combinations, such as "cancer+symptoms," in order to find their results. It gives people the opportunity to ask very specific and simple questions and find the answers they need...fast. And while you're thinking that may be Ask.com's approach, it's not. Just look at these results from Ask next to these results for the same question asked of hakia. These are very different search experiences.
It seems hakia has found an innovative solution to search, though still perhaps not the only solution.
Either way, hakia is on to something big in terms of putting its user's first. The search engine's privacy policy of not following you during your searches and its "meaning based" engine both put the power of search within the people searching instead of the search engine itself.
Do you think hakia can become a successful search engine business although the company isn't following a traditional path? Has privacy become as major an issue as hakia's COO states, and will it cause other search engine companies to go cookieless as well?
View our slideshow Search Engine Showdown to learn more about how search technology has evolved over time.
Top mistakes newbie SEOs make
Top mistakes newbie SEOs make
We have all been a newbie SEO at one time or another. But if you are new to the industry… or just need a refresher that you aren’t making a cardinal newbie error when it comes to your site’s optimization, here are some of the top and most frequent mistakes and how to fix them. And yes, I did one of these back in 1999… although fortunately it wasn’t one of the ones that would get me banned, either back then or now!
My site ranks for “some really obscure multi-keyword phrase”.
Wow, you rank number one for “search engine optimization in Smalltown USA”. But who actually searches for that? You can be number one for tens of thousands of obscure keyword combinations, but if no one is actually searching for any of them, you have just wasted your time and effort optimizing for them (but hopefully it was sheer coincidence that you rank for them, and not actual effort on your part!)
Instead, use one of the many tools on the market that can give you some idea of how many people are searching for various keyword combinations related to your industry and focus on the ones that can actually bring you traffic rather than the unusual or obscure ones that no one ever searches for except you when you check your rankings.
Only focusing on the homepage
In the short tail world, one would only need to focus on the homepage. But in the world where long tail is not only king but queen too, you cannot afford to let your internal pages go neglected while your homepage gets the royal treatment.
Consider your internal pages just as important as your homepage, and don’t forget that a large percentage of your visitors will actually enter your site through an internal page, and not the homepage, so ensure that you have suitable navigation in place so that the visitor won’t get lost if they didn’t happen to get to your site via your homepage.
Too much time and effort on the meta tags
Yes, once upon a time meta tags were a very important part of any search engine optimization campaign. But the fairy tale is over and while you definitely shouldn’t ignore the value of meta tags, they aren’t so much relevant nowadays for rankings as they are for displaying what shows in the search engine results page.
The robots.txt oops
I am still a person that triple checks any robots.txt file I do. And while I fortunately (knock on wood) have never had any problems by accidentally disallowing all bots from visiting any of my sites via a robots.txt-gone-bad, I have seen the results of newbie webmasters who think they are telling Googlebot and Slurp to visit their site, when they are actually disallowing them from visiting and indexing the entire site. Ooops.
If you too live in fear, run any robots.txt file through a validator the moment it goes up (to reduce the window of opportunity of a bot happening to visit when you have a messed up robots.txt file live on the site). And it is worth double checking Google Webmaster Central to make sure Googlebot doesn’t have any indexing problems stemming from robots.txt, or any other reason.
Focusing on the traffic numbers without checking the follow through
Wow, so you had ten thousand visitors today. That traffic is pretty decent, depending on your goals, but the most important figure is page views… and the bounce rate. If those ten thousand visitors have a bounce rate of 98% (meaning only 2% of those ten thousand actually stuck around to click a second page) you need to figure out why so many leave after their first page view. Reduce your bounce rate and your page views will go up, and you can turn the slightly over 10,000 page views into 20,000 or 30,000, simply by figuring out why 98% of your traffic leaves immediately and what you can do to ensure they stick around for at least another page or two.
Don’t forget it is much easier to make some changes to a page or website to keep a visitor on your site for a few additional page views than it is to optimize to get entirely new visitors.
It’s only about the links
There is no doubt that inbound links are very important to any website. But don’t make the mistake of thinking it is the only important thing about your site. Sure, throw enough links at even the crappiest site and it will probably rank… however it will also probably tank in the serps shortly after. For your site to live a happy and healthy existence in the search engine results, you need to include links in your SEO strategy, but we aware that it is only one piece of the entire SEO pie.
While there are also many other newbie SEO mistakes (hidden text, keyword stuffing and spammy linking strategies, just to name a few) these are some of the common ones that I am sure some of you can admit you just might have done in the past before you knew better!
My site ranks for “some really obscure multi-keyword phrase”.
Wow, you rank number one for “search engine optimization in Smalltown USA”. But who actually searches for that? You can be number one for tens of thousands of obscure keyword combinations, but if no one is actually searching for any of them, you have just wasted your time and effort optimizing for them (but hopefully it was sheer coincidence that you rank for them, and not actual effort on your part!)
Instead, use one of the many tools on the market that can give you some idea of how many people are searching for various keyword combinations related to your industry and focus on the ones that can actually bring you traffic rather than the unusual or obscure ones that no one ever searches for except you when you check your rankings.
Only focusing on the homepage
In the short tail world, one would only need to focus on the homepage. But in the world where long tail is not only king but queen too, you cannot afford to let your internal pages go neglected while your homepage gets the royal treatment.
Consider your internal pages just as important as your homepage, and don’t forget that a large percentage of your visitors will actually enter your site through an internal page, and not the homepage, so ensure that you have suitable navigation in place so that the visitor won’t get lost if they didn’t happen to get to your site via your homepage.
Too much time and effort on the meta tags
Yes, once upon a time meta tags were a very important part of any search engine optimization campaign. But the fairy tale is over and while you definitely shouldn’t ignore the value of meta tags, they aren’t so much relevant nowadays for rankings as they are for displaying what shows in the search engine results page.
The robots.txt oops
I am still a person that triple checks any robots.txt file I do. And while I fortunately (knock on wood) have never had any problems by accidentally disallowing all bots from visiting any of my sites via a robots.txt-gone-bad, I have seen the results of newbie webmasters who think they are telling Googlebot and Slurp to visit their site, when they are actually disallowing them from visiting and indexing the entire site. Ooops.
If you too live in fear, run any robots.txt file through a validator the moment it goes up (to reduce the window of opportunity of a bot happening to visit when you have a messed up robots.txt file live on the site). And it is worth double checking Google Webmaster Central to make sure Googlebot doesn’t have any indexing problems stemming from robots.txt, or any other reason.
Focusing on the traffic numbers without checking the follow through
Wow, so you had ten thousand visitors today. That traffic is pretty decent, depending on your goals, but the most important figure is page views… and the bounce rate. If those ten thousand visitors have a bounce rate of 98% (meaning only 2% of those ten thousand actually stuck around to click a second page) you need to figure out why so many leave after their first page view. Reduce your bounce rate and your page views will go up, and you can turn the slightly over 10,000 page views into 20,000 or 30,000, simply by figuring out why 98% of your traffic leaves immediately and what you can do to ensure they stick around for at least another page or two.
Don’t forget it is much easier to make some changes to a page or website to keep a visitor on your site for a few additional page views than it is to optimize to get entirely new visitors.
It’s only about the links
There is no doubt that inbound links are very important to any website. But don’t make the mistake of thinking it is the only important thing about your site. Sure, throw enough links at even the crappiest site and it will probably rank… however it will also probably tank in the serps shortly after. For your site to live a happy and healthy existence in the search engine results, you need to include links in your SEO strategy, but we aware that it is only one piece of the entire SEO pie.
While there are also many other newbie SEO mistakes (hidden text, keyword stuffing and spammy linking strategies, just to name a few) these are some of the common ones that I am sure some of you can admit you just might have done in the past before you knew better!
Customized SEO Tricks For Making Money Online
Customized SEO Tricks For Making Money Online
Who does not desire to put some extra money in their pocket? If you ask me the same question to me I would never hesitate to answer that I always desire to spend randomly without any tension that would keep my fist tight, impulses under control preventing me to do so. I just hate it. And I would also like everyone to earn more to spend more. And fortunately there are a number of freelancer websites that you can join. You may work at home and put some extra money in your pocket starting with $0 capital.
Well isn’t it mind blowing? The World Wide Web, being an economy in itself, offers a variety of chances to seek fortunes and you can try your hand at freelance jobs like data encoding, medical transcription, article composition and programming but for all these you need a base of operation in the Internet that will help you to earn unlimited income. There are numerous vendor sites that offer Internet surfers the opportunity of earning additional income in exchange for the promotion of their website and products. You will only need to sign-up for affiliate memberships.
Promotion of the vendor sites follows creation of your purposeful websites well designed. To promote the vendor site you will need to add links to the site's home page and some specific products, which has the probability to sell more. Your website must have space to accommodate these links. You also need to add the ID or reference number to the link that you will be receiving as soon as you sign-up for affiliate memberships so that the vendor can identify your referral.
Next very important step is to write content on the product you are selling within limited words and make sure that your content should be relevant and filled with keywords that relate to the product itself. But usage of the keyword must be done in a natural process. You should also remember to use you keywords in your text anchor link. Remember not to stuff your contents with keywords turning people off instead you should emphasized on the basic reason behind the idea of adding keywords to your content is to maximize your efforts with more clicks.
Allotting one page for each product will help you in search engine result rankings. Studies have shown that advertisements that rhyme are more effective than that lacks it. So if the first sentence of your web copy has a suitable rhyme, especially one that is key worded can be quite challenging especially if you are trying to fit just a couple of lines on an advertising button or a banner. This is just one option where you can possibly earn a lot more than your current income if you work sincerely.
Who does not desire to put some extra money in their pocket? If you ask me the same question to me I would never hesitate to answer that I always desire to spend randomly without any tension that would keep my fist tight, impulses under control preventing me to do so. I just hate it. And I would also like everyone to earn more to spend more. And fortunately there are a number of freelancer websites that you can join. You may work at home and put some extra money in your pocket starting with $0 capital.
Well isn’t it mind blowing? The World Wide Web, being an economy in itself, offers a variety of chances to seek fortunes and you can try your hand at freelance jobs like data encoding, medical transcription, article composition and programming but for all these you need a base of operation in the Internet that will help you to earn unlimited income. There are numerous vendor sites that offer Internet surfers the opportunity of earning additional income in exchange for the promotion of their website and products. You will only need to sign-up for affiliate memberships.
Promotion of the vendor sites follows creation of your purposeful websites well designed. To promote the vendor site you will need to add links to the site's home page and some specific products, which has the probability to sell more. Your website must have space to accommodate these links. You also need to add the ID or reference number to the link that you will be receiving as soon as you sign-up for affiliate memberships so that the vendor can identify your referral.
Next very important step is to write content on the product you are selling within limited words and make sure that your content should be relevant and filled with keywords that relate to the product itself. But usage of the keyword must be done in a natural process. You should also remember to use you keywords in your text anchor link. Remember not to stuff your contents with keywords turning people off instead you should emphasized on the basic reason behind the idea of adding keywords to your content is to maximize your efforts with more clicks.
Allotting one page for each product will help you in search engine result rankings. Studies have shown that advertisements that rhyme are more effective than that lacks it. So if the first sentence of your web copy has a suitable rhyme, especially one that is key worded can be quite challenging especially if you are trying to fit just a couple of lines on an advertising button or a banner. This is just one option where you can possibly earn a lot more than your current income if you work sincerely.
Customized SEO Tricks For Making Money Online
Customized SEO Tricks For Making Money Online
Who does not desire to put some extra money in their pocket? If you ask me the same question to me I would never hesitate to answer that I always desire to spend randomly without any tension that would keep my fist tight, impulses under control preventing me to do so. I just hate it. And I would also like everyone to earn more to spend more. And fortunately there are a number of freelancer websites that you can join. You may work at home and put some extra money in your pocket starting with $0 capital.
Well isn’t it mind blowing? The World Wide Web, being an economy in itself, offers a variety of chances to seek fortunes and you can try your hand at freelance jobs like data encoding, medical transcription, article composition and programming but for all these you need a base of operation in the Internet that will help you to earn unlimited income. There are numerous vendor sites that offer Internet surfers the opportunity of earning additional income in exchange for the promotion of their website and products. You will only need to sign-up for affiliate memberships.
Promotion of the vendor sites follows creation of your purposeful websites well designed. To promote the vendor site you will need to add links to the site's home page and some specific products, which has the probability to sell more. Your website must have space to accommodate these links. You also need to add the ID or reference number to the link that you will be receiving as soon as you sign-up for affiliate memberships so that the vendor can identify your referral.
Next very important step is to write content on the product you are selling within limited words and make sure that your content should be relevant and filled with keywords that relate to the product itself. But usage of the keyword must be done in a natural process. You should also remember to use you keywords in your text anchor link. Remember not to stuff your contents with keywords turning people off instead you should emphasized on the basic reason behind the idea of adding keywords to your content is to maximize your efforts with more clicks.
Allotting one page for each product will help you in search engine result rankings. Studies have shown that advertisements that rhyme are more effective than that lacks it. So if the first sentence of your web copy has a suitable rhyme, especially one that is key worded can be quite challenging especially if you are trying to fit just a couple of lines on an advertising button or a banner. This is just one option where you can possibly earn a lot more than your current income if you work sincerely.
Who does not desire to put some extra money in their pocket? If you ask me the same question to me I would never hesitate to answer that I always desire to spend randomly without any tension that would keep my fist tight, impulses under control preventing me to do so. I just hate it. And I would also like everyone to earn more to spend more. And fortunately there are a number of freelancer websites that you can join. You may work at home and put some extra money in your pocket starting with $0 capital.
Well isn’t it mind blowing? The World Wide Web, being an economy in itself, offers a variety of chances to seek fortunes and you can try your hand at freelance jobs like data encoding, medical transcription, article composition and programming but for all these you need a base of operation in the Internet that will help you to earn unlimited income. There are numerous vendor sites that offer Internet surfers the opportunity of earning additional income in exchange for the promotion of their website and products. You will only need to sign-up for affiliate memberships.
Promotion of the vendor sites follows creation of your purposeful websites well designed. To promote the vendor site you will need to add links to the site's home page and some specific products, which has the probability to sell more. Your website must have space to accommodate these links. You also need to add the ID or reference number to the link that you will be receiving as soon as you sign-up for affiliate memberships so that the vendor can identify your referral.
Next very important step is to write content on the product you are selling within limited words and make sure that your content should be relevant and filled with keywords that relate to the product itself. But usage of the keyword must be done in a natural process. You should also remember to use you keywords in your text anchor link. Remember not to stuff your contents with keywords turning people off instead you should emphasized on the basic reason behind the idea of adding keywords to your content is to maximize your efforts with more clicks.
Allotting one page for each product will help you in search engine result rankings. Studies have shown that advertisements that rhyme are more effective than that lacks it. So if the first sentence of your web copy has a suitable rhyme, especially one that is key worded can be quite challenging especially if you are trying to fit just a couple of lines on an advertising button or a banner. This is just one option where you can possibly earn a lot more than your current income if you work sincerely.
Questions To Ask When Looking For Search Engine Optimization Firms
How to Choose a SEO Search Engine Optimization Company
If you're scouting for a SEO company to perform ethical, effective SEO Search Engine Optimization Services for your website, then don't be afraid to ask questions and request to see client testimonials/references.
Here are some of the questions we believe you should ask before hiring a SEO company:
Find out how long the SEO company has been in business.
Does the SEO firm or its principals have marketing experience background?
Do they have long-term satisfied clients? Make sure they prove it with client testimonials and references.
Do they have detailed case studies to show you with verifible results of search engine positions they've achieved for clients?
Will they perform an analysis of your competition's websites to understand why the other sites rank highly?
What will the SEO company base their keyword recommendations on? Keyword research is a necessity to determine relevent, targeted keywords in order for a SEO campaign to succeed.
What are realistic traffic expectations for your site? Obscure keyword phrases may bring top ten or #1 ranking positions but if only a trickle of people search for the term each month, it likely won't result in increased sales.
Does the SEO differeniate between "traffic" and "qualified" traffic? Bulk unqualified traffic arriving at your site for irrelevant keywords are unlikely to convert to a sale or new customer. Does the SEO firm understand what it takes to create a sales conversion?
Does the SEO company adhere to search engine's posted best practises and a strict no-spam policy to avoid your website being penalized, possibly indefinitely, by search engines?
What methods will the SEO company use to increase traffic? Will they make changes to your existing web page coding or will they just be adding or revising meta tags? Will they be performing search engine optimization copywriting and editing to add relevant keywords to your visible page text? Will they be adding new pages, or possibly redesigning your navigation to make it more search engine friendly?
How many pages will they be optimizing in your website?
How much, if any, of their strategy relies on pay-per-click advertising and how much will that cost? Remember, pay-per-click is like leasing vs. buying a car. When you stop paying, the traffic discontinues. We sometimes recommend pay-per-click advertising for specific marketing strategies, but not for ongoing search engine visibility. Pay-per-click is not a long-term solution unless you have deep pockets. Obtaining "free" search engine positions in natural search engines, such as Google, is the preferred - and longer-term - route to traffic.
If the SEO company is offering high ranking guarantees - how is that possible when no-one can control or influence the search sites? Even Google's own published guidelines states: "No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. Beware of SEO's that claim to guarantee rankings, or that claim a "special relationship" with Google, or that claim to have a "priority submit" to Google. There is no priority submit for Google."
How will your web site traffic be monitored and measured? What type of reports will you get and how often will you receive them?
How will your overall Return On Investment (ROI) be measured?
Do due diligence - there are many fly-by-night SEO Search Engine Optimization companies who make outrageous claims with unsubstantiated results and present no client list or testimonials to back up their claims
Friday, November 21, 2008
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Monday, November 10, 2008
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Effective AdSense Tips from Google
I just went over to AdSense official blog and found that Google have created an Optimization Demo where you can view and learn Google suggested Adsense optimization techniques to maximize your AdSense performance. The demo will show you the ad positions that are proven to be generating high CTR with screen shots of AdSense websites and other useful AdSense tips like what ad formats and color you should use......
If you are a beginner or an experienced webmaster not satisfied with your current AdSense CTR and earning, I suggest you take a look at Optimization Demo to learn some techniques that you can apply instantly to your site and blog.
If you are a beginner or an experienced webmaster not satisfied with your current AdSense CTR and earning, I suggest you take a look at Optimization Demo to learn some techniques that you can apply instantly to your site and blog.
4 Steps to Creating A Website Specifically to Earn AdSense Revenue
Building a website to earn Google AdSense advertising revenue has become a popular way to make extra money online nowadays. It is easier to earn AdSense income versus generating sales by selling products or services online. However it does involve works, time and money before you start earning from Adsense program. Below are the steps to creating a content website for earning AdSense revenue.
Step 1
Decide the content of your website. You can write a topic or subject related to your interest, hobbies or experience. You can also provide educational information and advice on your website if you are expert at something.
Step 2
Use a website builder to create your website. One of the easy-to-use website builders that can help you build a website is Bluevoda website builder. Bluevoda site builder allows users to build a website without technical knowledge. You don’t need to build your site from scratch. The trick is to use a free professional template provided by the site builder and then start adding your text and links to your website. You can add some graphics and pictures to make your site look nicer. After completing your website project, your next step is register a domain name and sign up for a hosting account to publish your website on the Internet.
Step 3
Join Google AdSense program. It will usually take several days for Google AdSense team to review and approve your site. If Google accepts your application. You can start learning how to generate AdSense code for inserting to your website to generate Adsense revenue. If your site rejected by Google, don’t get upset easily. Google will let you know the reasons of the rejection. You can fix the problems and reapply again.
Step 4
You need to drive targeted Visitors/Traffic to your website to generate Adsense revenue. The higher your website’s traffic the greater your Adsense earning will be. Below are some of the ways that can help you drive some traffic to your website in short period of time.
1) Use Per-per-click (PPC) advertising. The two most popular PPC search engines are Google and Yahoo. Google and Yahoo can deliver instant traffic to your website but it is costly to advertise on Google and Yahoo. There are other alternatives like Bidvertise.com and Clicksor.com which are cheaper to advertise with.
2) Introduce your site to your family and friends.
3) Write several articles with a link to your website on the resource box and submit them to article directories. You can find a list of article directories by going to Google and entering the search term 'article directory'.
4) Post messages on community forums with a link to your site on the signature of each message posted.
Step 1
Decide the content of your website. You can write a topic or subject related to your interest, hobbies or experience. You can also provide educational information and advice on your website if you are expert at something.
Step 2
Use a website builder to create your website. One of the easy-to-use website builders that can help you build a website is Bluevoda website builder. Bluevoda site builder allows users to build a website without technical knowledge. You don’t need to build your site from scratch. The trick is to use a free professional template provided by the site builder and then start adding your text and links to your website. You can add some graphics and pictures to make your site look nicer. After completing your website project, your next step is register a domain name and sign up for a hosting account to publish your website on the Internet.
Step 3
Join Google AdSense program. It will usually take several days for Google AdSense team to review and approve your site. If Google accepts your application. You can start learning how to generate AdSense code for inserting to your website to generate Adsense revenue. If your site rejected by Google, don’t get upset easily. Google will let you know the reasons of the rejection. You can fix the problems and reapply again.
Step 4
You need to drive targeted Visitors/Traffic to your website to generate Adsense revenue. The higher your website’s traffic the greater your Adsense earning will be. Below are some of the ways that can help you drive some traffic to your website in short period of time.
1) Use Per-per-click (PPC) advertising. The two most popular PPC search engines are Google and Yahoo. Google and Yahoo can deliver instant traffic to your website but it is costly to advertise on Google and Yahoo. There are other alternatives like Bidvertise.com and Clicksor.com which are cheaper to advertise with.
2) Introduce your site to your family and friends.
3) Write several articles with a link to your website on the resource box and submit them to article directories. You can find a list of article directories by going to Google and entering the search term 'article directory'.
4) Post messages on community forums with a link to your site on the signature of each message posted.
Make Extra Money With A Blog Without Spending A Dime
Blog or weblog is simply a website with frequent updates on a particular subject or topic. You can write a comment, review, suggestion or tip on a subject on your blog. You can also provide educational resources and advice if you are an expert at something. For instance, If your blog is about sport cars. You can post the latest annoucements from sport cars manufacturers such as BMW, Ferrari and so on, discuss about the latest models of sport cars and the best components used for producing sport cars.
Blogger.com allows anyone to create a free blog (free domain name and hosting) without any technical knowledge. Creating a blog with Blogger.com is easy and you can have you blog published within an hours.
There are several ways you can make money with a blog:
Become a Google AdSense publisher
You can join Google AdSense program and start earning advertising revenue from your blog. It is not difficult to set up you AdSense campaign as Blogger.com also provides Adsense tool and guidances to help you start an AdSense campaign. This can be a great source of revenue, though of course the amount of income you can expect from your AdSense ads will depend on the amount of traffic (visitors) to your blog.
Sell Other People's Stuff
You can promote your affiliate programs by placing the affiliate links and banners on your blog and earn commission whenever someone clicks through an affiliate link or banner to your merchant's website made a purchase.
Sell Your Own Product
Blog can be used to promote and sell your own products too. You can write about your products' features and benefits on the blog.
Drive Visitors to You Blog
To make money you need to drive visitors or traffic to your blog. The more traffic you're getting the higher your earning will be. There are several free ways of getting traffic to your blog. Here's how ......
1) Introduce your blog to your family and friends.
2) Submit your blog to directories. You can find a list of blog directories by going to Google and entering the search term 'submit blog url'.
3) Write an article or more with a link to your blog and submit them to article directories. You can find a list of article directories by going to Google and entering the search term 'article directory'.
4) Post messages on community forums with a link to your blog on the signature of each message posted.
There are other ways (free and paid) to increase traffic for your blog. You can find a lot of free information and resources about blog promotion from search engines.
Blogger.com allows anyone to create a free blog (free domain name and hosting) without any technical knowledge. Creating a blog with Blogger.com is easy and you can have you blog published within an hours.
There are several ways you can make money with a blog:
Become a Google AdSense publisher
You can join Google AdSense program and start earning advertising revenue from your blog. It is not difficult to set up you AdSense campaign as Blogger.com also provides Adsense tool and guidances to help you start an AdSense campaign. This can be a great source of revenue, though of course the amount of income you can expect from your AdSense ads will depend on the amount of traffic (visitors) to your blog.
Sell Other People's Stuff
You can promote your affiliate programs by placing the affiliate links and banners on your blog and earn commission whenever someone clicks through an affiliate link or banner to your merchant's website made a purchase.
Sell Your Own Product
Blog can be used to promote and sell your own products too. You can write about your products' features and benefits on the blog.
Drive Visitors to You Blog
To make money you need to drive visitors or traffic to your blog. The more traffic you're getting the higher your earning will be. There are several free ways of getting traffic to your blog. Here's how ......
1) Introduce your blog to your family and friends.
2) Submit your blog to directories. You can find a list of blog directories by going to Google and entering the search term 'submit blog url'.
3) Write an article or more with a link to your blog and submit them to article directories. You can find a list of article directories by going to Google and entering the search term 'article directory'.
4) Post messages on community forums with a link to your blog on the signature of each message posted.
There are other ways (free and paid) to increase traffic for your blog. You can find a lot of free information and resources about blog promotion from search engines.
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