Internet Marketing - SEO

Will Your Google SEO Help You With Yahoo?

2008-04-12T17:22:00.000-07:00

When employing the most basic search engine optimization techniques to your site with hopes of scoring high search rankings with Google, you can also gain extra value in the Yahoo! search engine. Learn more about the benefits of DMOZ and adding fresh content on your site.

If you are like most website owners who have applied some search engine optimization (SEO) efforts to your site, your main target has been ranking well in the Google search engine. While Google may be the dominant search engine, there is still much Internet visitor traffic to be gained by placing well in the Yahoo! search engine as well.

The question on the mind of many webmasters is whether optimizing for Google will provide benefits in the Yahoo! search results. The two search engines have differing search algorithms for calculating the search engine results pages (SERPs) for their individual searches. Because of the differences in the algorithms, there is some difference in emphasis on content and link value.

Concentrating heavily on links will certainly provide additional benefits for Google. Placing added emphasis on content of all types will pay dividends in Yahoo!. By understanding the importance of links and content to both search engines, you can successfully optimize your site for both. A balanced approach to links and to content will result in high search engine rankings in both Yahoo! and Google.

While it might seem fairly straightforward to simply add more incoming links and more on-page content, some fine tuning of your optimization efforts will pay off with both search engines. By taking a holistic approach with both Google and Yahoo optimization in mind, your site will achieve top rankings on both search results. With the added high search engine placements, your site traffic will increase, adding many more potential clients and customers to your online business.

Think in terms of both Google and Yahoo, and share in the best of both search engine worlds.

Crucial Factors In SEO

2008-03-27T15:45:00.000-07:00

By Ryan Simpson (c) 2008
There's no shortage on advice regarding what people should do to improve a web site's position in the search engine listings. It is easy to become confused when you consume all the information that is available, because some folks agree with others while some totally disagree and offer dissimilar advice.

You should be extremely suspicious of any advice given by someone that tells you to use search engine submissions, employ traffic exchanges, or use FFA sites. That is so out of date it's not funny.

What is pertinent for excellent rankings in the search engines was highlighted not too long ago via a survey done by SEOmoz of a collection of SEO professionals.

In short, below are the 4 most important search engine optimization ranking factors, in accordance with the experts' consensus views.

Keywords that Appear in the Title

Using the correct keywords when crafting the title tag of a page is of extreme importance. It does not only promote higher rankings, it also helps with the click-through from the SE listings to the destination page. It is of lesser value to be listed high in the results without receiving that many clicks. The ultimate purpose is to gain as many targeted visitors to your site as possible.

The keywords that were used by the searcher are bolded in the results of the search. When the right keyphrase of the page title is bolded, it gives the listing a higher opportunity of being seen and receiving a click. Nevertheless, highlighted keywords are not the only thing to think about when writing the page title tag.

Lots of additional clicks can be attained from a smartly written page title tag, especially when it invites the searcher to click. It is better to attract a hundred clicks from position number five with an eye-catching title tag than fifty clicks from position number three with a badly written title tag, correct?

Anchor Text used by Inbound Links

The anchor text that is employed in the link that points to your web site from an external site counts a lot in the search engine algorithms to figure out what your site is all about. Additionally, what your site is all about defines to a large extent what keywords it will rank for in the search results.

Full Article Here

Basic SEO Troubleshooting

2008-03-12T18:33:00.000-07:00

by Terri Wells

There are a number of good SEO checklists you can use when you start to optimize your web site for the search engines. They will help you make sure you do not miss anything as you climb to the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs). But what do you do if you have done everything you can think of and your site does not seem to be going anywhere?

Every SEO seems to confront this frustrating situation sooner or later. Fortunately, there are forums devoted to SEO. Many heads with lots of experience, often with very different kinds of sites, can come up with things to check that one person beating his or her head against a bunch of pixels might not have considered. Developers call the practice of trying to figure out why a particular program is not working the way it should troubleshooting. This article will cover some of the things you will want to consider when troubleshooting your web sites SEO.

It was inspired by a thread in our own SEO Chat forums. The original poster mentioned that he maintained a site that had less than half of its pages listed in the main index of Google. He made some major changes to its internal linking structure to fix some mistakes he had made earlier; Google also is not listing his internal links correctly now. He is looking for some kind of checklist so he does not feel like he is just stabbing in the dark.

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Google Knol: Implications for SEO

2008-02-29T14:46:00.000-08:00

by Terri Wells

When Google announced its Knol project in December, many analysts said that the search engine giant went one step too far by effectively entering the turf of content producers. What kind of effect will this super-secret project have on search engine optimization practices if and when Google opens the service to the public?

Before I can cover the possible SEO implications, I'll need to explain what Google Knol is and why it may matter to SEOs. On December 13, 2007, Udi Manber, a Google VP of Engineering posted to the Google blog about "inviting a selected group of people to try a new, free tool that we are calling 'knol,' which stands for a unit of knowledge." The idea behind Google Knol is to convince people who are authorities in their fields to write an article on the subject, thus increasing the actual knowledge available on the Internet.

The project is in private beta and invitation-only, so unfortunately I have no details as to the tools and interface that Google is providing to authors. In addition to offering free tools for writing and editing the knol, which is really nothing more than a web page, Google will host it for free. "Writers only need to write; we'll do the rest," Manber said.

SEO No No's - Hidden Text & Duplicate Pgs

2008-02-15T16:55:00.000-08:00

Hidden Text: If you have any hidden text on your website "Remove it Immediately". Hidden text will get you in bug trouble with the search engines and it's something you should never do.

A hidden link is a link a search engine will follow but no human visitor will see. Hidden text could be keyword written in the same color as the background. If a search engine detects text in the same color as the background it could even ban the site. In fact, it has been suggested that if a website's background color is white and has a table with black background and therefore uses white text inside the black table this could be considered as hidden text by the search engines.
[white background, white text = hidden text = cheating]

Duplicate Content: Search Engines love sites with unique content for human visitors. If you have 4 or 3 different pages on your site with the same article even if you reword it a little bit it would be considered spamming.

Lots of really bad advice is floating around the net. Cheating the search engines is never a good idea, and might rather end up doing very bad for your site. The search engines are always evolving and moving a step ahead of unethical webmasters.

For quality seo services visit our seo area.

Top 10 SEO Tips to Improve Rankings

2008-02-11T09:36:00.000-08:00

By David Leonhardt
From the obvious to the "Hey-I-never-thought-of-that-great-idea-before", here are 10 seo tips on how to optimize your website for its turbo-charge rocket ride up the search engine rankings.

Be bold. Use the tags around some of your keywords on each page. Do NOT use them everywhere the keyword appears. Once or twice is plenty.

Deep linking. Make sure you have links coming in to as many pages as possible. What does it tell a search engine when other web sites are linking to different pages on your site? That you obviously have lots of worthwhile content. What does it tell a search engine that all your links are coming in to the home page? That you have a shallow site of little value, or that your links were generated by automation rather than by the value of your site.

Become a foreigner. Canada and the UK have many directories for websites of companies based in those countries. Can you get a business address in one of those countries?

Newsletters. Offer articles to ezine publishers that archive their ezines. The links stay live often for many years in their archives.

First come, first served. If you must have image links in your navigation bar, include also text links. However, make sure the text links show up first in the source code, because search engine robots will follow the first link they find to any particular page. They won't follow additional links to the same page.

Multiple domains. If you have several topics that could each support their own website, it might be worth having multiple domains. Why? First, search engines usually list only one page per domain for any given search, and you might warrant two. Second, directories usually accept only home pages, so you can get more directory listings this way. Why not a site dedicated to gumbo pudding pops?

Article exchanges. You've heard of link exchanges, useless as they generally are. Article exchanges are like link exchanges, only much more useful. You publish someone else's article on the history of pudding pops with a link back to their site. They publish your article on the top ten pudding pop flavors in Viet Nam, with a link back to your site. You both have content. You both get high quality links.

Titles for links. Links can get titles, too. Not only does this help visually impaired surfers know where you are sending them, but some search engines figure this into their relevancy for a page.
Not anchor text. Don't overdo the anchor text. You don't want all your inbound links looking the same, because that looks like automation - something Google frowns upon. Use your URL sometimes, your company name other times, "Gumbo Pudding Pop" occasionally, "Get gumbo pudding pops" as well, "Gumbo-flavored pudding pops" some other times, etc.

Site map. A big site needs a site map, which should be linked to from every page on the site. This will help the search engine robots find every page with just two clicks. A small site needs a site map, too. It's called the navigation bar. See how the second navigation bar at the bottom of Last Minute Florida Villas is like a mini-site map?

There is a lot more to search engine optimization, and there are always more details when looking at an individual site. But these tips should help any website significantly improve its rankings.

SEM and Blogging Techniques

2008-02-05T14:03:00.000-08:00

It is not difficult to get listed in a search engine, but getting listed in the top 20 positions is no easy job. The top 10 is the ideal, but if you are listed on one of the first two pages of a major search engine, then the traffic will come to you. That is guaranteed. Naturally, the higher you are listed the better, and you will do an awful lot better on the first page than on the second, but if the best you can do is page three then you are going to need a lot more than search engines to help you attract business.

So what are the main essentials of search engine marketing? You have two objectives, the first being to get listed and the second to reach the top 20. It is easy, as I stated earlier, to get listed on a search engine. Many design their site, submit it to Google and then wait for the Google Dance, when Google carries out its World Wide Web search for websites.

Forget that: do not submit your site to Google or any of the other search engines because that can delay your listing. Instead do one of two things. The best is to write a few articles on the topic of your website and submit them to the top article directories. If you can't write, or if English is not your main language, then use an article ghostwriter. There are plenty people online offering article services at good rates. Google and the rest frequently visit the higher ranked article directories and will pick up on the link to your website in your 'author's resource', or bio. When they find your site, you get listed, and that can happen in less than 24 hours. That is the main way, but the other is blogs. Add a blog to your site, and it will soon be listed. Google, especially, likes blogs, particularly if it is a Blogger blog, since Blogger is owned by Google. You are virtually guaranteed a listing. If you are not too keen on Blogger, you can switch once your site has been listed. Wordpress is arguably the most versatile blogging software available at the moment, especially if you are running it from your own web space.

Once you are listed, you can improve your position by optimizing each website page for the topic of that page. Don't forget that search engines list each page separately, and so each page should be optimized separately. However, you should initially focus on your index page, since it is that page which almost invariably gets listed highest. Once your site does have a reasonably high listing, it is possible that another page could get listed higher than your index page, although this is not generally the case.

You can then post a blog on the topic of the page and add new postings on a regular basis. You should also include a link to your blog from your web pages and a link on your blog sidebar to your website. This will enhance the probability of your home web page being listed, as it also will your blog, since your blog can also be listed on Google and other search engines.

There are some simple things that you can do to make your index page more attractive to the search engines. Bear in mind that your listing is for one search term only, as used by someone seeking information related to the topic of your page. You can receive another listing for another search term (or keyword) on a different index. So, what you must do is to determine the best keyword for which to optimize your index page.

Once you have decided that, include it in the title of your page and place the title in 'title' tags. Try to make the title a bit longer than your keyword, so if your keyword is, say, 'lock design', make the title 'The History of Lock Design', for example. The main heading for the page need not be the same, but should also contain your keyword. A good heading, for example, would be 'Lock Design from the 18th Century'. Place that in H1 tags to tell the search engine algorithm that the heading contains important text relating to your web page.

How your SEO linking should look like

2008-01-18T12:32:00.000-08:00

We all know already that link popularity has great influence on a website's search engine ranking, but the way most webmasters build links may end up hurting their website in the search results.

The most common way of building links has been seeking out reciprocal links, directory listings, forum posting and then article marketing but with Google's constant improvements this is no longer enough and if you do it the wrong way it can become harmful.

If you really want to step above of the crowds you might want to start considering press releases and paid links. For those with very small budgets I would recommend to buy at least 2 - 3 links from high page rank sites that are related to your site's content. This will add huge value to your website.

Now don't get me wrong reciprocal links are still valuable, but don't abuse! And only from quality websites. The same for article marketing, these can still affect link popularity and the ability of a website to rank on search engines, but you MUST make sure that the articles are interesting to the reader. This means your article must be good which will lead people to bookmark the page. Social bookmarks can add value to a web page that is linked in the bookmark, because "a person" has voted on the referenced URL or article. That is a very powerful addition to Google's algorithm arsenal.

Link Baits is a clever seo strategy that consists of building pages that people for sure will want to link to. The most common link baits offer some kind of tool like a game, a puzzle, a paint color selector or just any java-based application that does one thing or another.

So here is the important stuff. Where are your links? What kind of links are they? Are your links all structured the same? Do they come in the same format (articles, press releases)? Here is the one important to our discussion. Do they all appear on the same kind(s) of website?

Headings and robots.txt file

2008-01-11T21:16:00.000-08:00

Make sure you have a robots.txt file in your server, this file is important for web crawlers to know which directories can or cannot be crawled.
Check your pages for grammer errors make sure there are no mispellings. This will exhibit about how professional you are.
You should use your keywords in heading text (H1) these are still influential in the search engines.
Don't over-use the H1 heading tag given that there is no difference between the relevancy influence of the H1, H2, H3, H4, H5 or H6.

Important information 4 successful website

2008-01-11T21:04:00.000-08:00

Did you know that if a page takes too long to load, it may not be spidered by the search engine robots. Try and ensure your pages load quickly.

How quickly? Consider how fast the major search engine pages load. Are heavy graphics slowing your load speed? Try a test with http://www.optiview.com

In all of our efforts to write well for the robots, we must remember to also write well for the human brain. Remember that the human brain likes the appropriate use of color. The human brain likes text broken down into manageable chunks or clusters that are easy to read and absorb. Write your copy using all of the important SEO principles but be sure to strike a balance.

With practice, you can build pages that are content rich and compelling to read.
You can create projects that are pleasing to look at and still score exceptionally
well in the rankings.

Keyword distribution in your website

2007-03-13T07:34:00.000-07:00

Did you know that search engines rank pages and not entire websites? Each one of your pages should contain unique content and should be focused on ranking for different keywords. Every page "must" have it's own unique title, description and keyword tag.

The keywords you choose to use should be just for that only page:
Ex:
Page 1 Keywords: Wedding supplies and wedding favors
Page 2 keywords: Wedding decorations and decorating ideas
Page 3 keywords: Wedding dresses and wedding gowns

Each page should be focused on it's main keywords but the entire website should be relevant. If the website is about "wedding" make sure all your pages talk about wedding but focusing on your keywords for that particular page you should also use synonyms of those keywords. Remember your keyword meta tag should be specific for each page.

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Search Engines Artificial Intelligence

2007-03-09T06:37:00.000-08:00

When writing your website content try using synonyms of your keywords. The search engine will "think" these words are related through it's artificial intelligence factors (AI). The better quality content you write the better you will rank on the search engines thanks it's AI.

Useful information you should have in mind when building your website.
Things you shouldn't do:

Build websites entirely on Flash
Avoid using frames
No presence at all of keywords in your content.
Don't use hidden text or hidden links
Do not create multiple pages or domains

Is Google Page Rank so Important?

2007-03-08T07:32:00.000-08:00

Page Rank is no longer what it used to be, it is no longer has the importance it used to have. Page Rank is no more than just the measure of importance your website has in terms of relevancy. Focus on building quality and relevant content on your website and you should see how your website starts to show up on the search engines even if you have a page rank of 3.

Achieving a higher page rank won't assure you the top positions on the search queries. Review the Google webmaster guidelines regularly for updates
http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

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Importance of validating your codes

2007-03-06T09:48:00.000-08:00

Here is today's WMCR SEO tip. Make sure you validate your CSS style sheets and your HTML and several other things you might need to validate too. Here is a list of cool tools you can use to make the validations for your website: http://www.w3.org/QA/Tools/

Validating your codes will assure you that whatever you are publishing will be accessible for a search engine spider or robots as for teh human visitor.

The importance of Site Maps for SEO

2007-03-05T10:08:00.000-08:00

Include a site map on your website. Your site map page should include a link to every single page of your website, this will give easy access to the many search engine robots that look for this page in order to crawl your entire website. A link to the site map page should be on your website's template.

On your site map each link should be a small description of the page it links to, include the main keyword of the respective page once on the description. Ex:

Description: Affordable web hosting packages
Link: www.yoursite.com/page1.html

Improve your search engine ranking

2007-03-03T21:48:00.000-08:00

While spending most of your time trying to write your content to increase your search engine ranking don't forget that you have to write for the human reader first. Many people do not write good content when trying to optimize.

Spend your time creating useful content that will benefit your visitors, after your article is done wisely insert your main keywords in way that won't affect your visitors reading when going over it. This is the best way to have unique and rich content for your visitors as well as for the spiders that will crawl your site.

Remember to include strong call to action right after the reader has finished reading the content. What are you offering? What do you wish to appeal to? Why should they interest in your offer? What do they need to do to purchase/participate? How difficult is the process?

HOT TIP!
Studies recently carried out in eye tracking indicate that a visitors eye is usually first drawn to images on the page. If the product promo image is on the right hand side, it requires more effort for the visitor to move their eyes back to the left.

SEO - How to write your website title

2007-03-03T09:28:00.000-08:00

Search for your most important keyword phrase. Carefully study the top 10 results. Which is the best written title? Which is the most captivating? Which grabs the reader by the throat and makes him or her want to click on the link? Is it the #1 ranked result? Not necessarily, is it? Is it your listing?

If it's not your listing, and especially if you're having problems with click throughs with this keyword phrase, how can you change your title to make it more intriguing and designed to pull in traffic? We're talking about click throughs here. You can often beat the top ranked sites if you have a more appealing and captivating title.

Make a list of title changes, being sure to include your keyword phrase in the title. Set it aside and don't look at it for two days. Then, bring it out again and study the list again. Begun culling down the list. Get others' opinions. Try a new title, and see if your click through rate will improve.

How to use keywords in the meta tags

2007-03-01T12:21:00.001-08:00

Todays WMCR SEO tip is about how to write your meta tags. Even though it's true that keywords are very important to be found a various times within the content of your website as well as on the meta tags, avoid over-using any keyword in your meta tags. It is recomended to use only one or two instances of any word. (at most)

Duplicate content pages is bad for SEO

2007-03-01T11:43:00.000-08:00

Duplicate content is a huge topic nowadays; search engines are known to penalize website that practice this thanks to the new filters that search engines have implemented. Many websites have replicas or similar content to other websites on the internet. These people assume that creating copies of another page will increase their chances of ranking on the search engines.

Here is a very useful and free tool you can use to check the percentage of similarity in your content between pages http://www.webconfs.com/similar-page-checker.php . This tool is great, since it can tell you how you can change your descriptions so you can have unique and original content on your website.