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SEO Tips For New Webmasters

explorercomp — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 04:59:13 +0000

We decided to make a quick list of SEO Tips for new webmasters or website owners to help eliminate all the confusion and outrageous claims of secrets and backdoor methods. Make no mistake about it, there are what are termed “blackhat” SEO techniques. But they rarely provide any long term value since they are quickly found and eliminated by the search engines, and punishment is swift.

A lot of people want to make search engine optimization appear to be highly technical and secretive. If you go to any of the popular search engines information pages, they give you the basic guidelines and even provide some good ways to check your website for potential problems. There are no secrets, the exact method search engines use to rank and index pages is proprietary to protect against people who would use that information to corrupt the integrity of the search results.

So to cut through some of the long and less than exciting information available on SEO, we compiled a simple list of necessary procedures to follow when creating any new website page. Which brings up another issue that may be misunderstood. Search engines rank website pages, not the entire website. Each website page stands on it’s own in being ranked and indexed.

SEO can be split into two areas. One is on page, which deals with how you present and format any information. The other is off page, which deals with links that point to your website pages. Another key point is not to sacrifice user-friendly aspects for SEO methods. The visitor experience should always be considered when trying to create a search engine friendly website page.

SEO on page factors are:

Meta Tags – Your title, description, keywords, should match the content. Using your keyword phrases in each in a logical and accurate manner for both search engines and vistors is important.

File Names – The page file name, graphics alt text, and any associated files should be named using the keyword phrases or related terms as they apply.

Theme – Keyword phrases should be used in natural way a long with associated and related terms. Don’t over do the keyword phrase (called “stuffing” keywords), use where necessary but don’t over use. Use H1-H6 HTML tags to indicate important titles (H1 being the most important, H6 being the least). You can also use other font attributes to indicate importance like bold, italics, or even colors.

Navigation – All navigation links should use descriptive anchor text to make it easy for both the search engines and the visitors to understand the content. If you use pull down menu graphics as element of design, make sure you also include anchor text equivalents somewhere on the website page.

SEO off page factors:

Links – Off page SEO is primarily all about links to your website page from other website pages. The authority or what Google calls Pagerank, is a point of consideration, since Pagerank can flow downwards to your website page (i.e. a Pagerank is between 1-10, the higher the number the more value). The perfect link, if there is one, would be from a high Pagerank website page of similar or like content that uses anchor text that accurately describes the content of the page being linked too.

There are many opinions on the amount of Pagerank that flows down, the weighting of the content, and the accuracy of the anchor text. Your best bet is to go with the basics of all three and be done with it.

Too many new webmasters get caught up in all the nuances and details of every specific aspect of off and on page SEO. You can easily drive yourself crazy with all the different opinions and the latest tricks or trends. The search engines constantly update the mathematical algorithms they use to rank and index website pages. The search engine’s goal is to produce the most accurate search results and to eliminate any attempts at beating the system.

The best SEO tip I can give is to follow the search engine guidelines, provide high value content, and always keep the visitor in mind while doing any SEO. Once a visitor arrives, you need to make sure that the information you present does its intended job, whatever that might involve. If direct sales, convert them to a buyer. Or maybe sign up for your newsletter, or additional information.

Getting tightly targeted search engine traffic is great, but always keep the visitor experience in mind when doing search engine optimization. Try not to get lost in the weeds and forget the main purpose of your website, whatever your goals. Sometimes the best SEO tips for new webmasters are to keep it simple and effective for both the search engines and the website page visitors.

Ten Of The Internet’s Best SEO Tips!

explorercomp — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 04:59:14 +0000

A good tip is a great gift to those who are in need of advice, I love the quote “give a man a fish, you will feed him for a day – teach a man to fish, you will feed him for a life time! If the tips are on SEO, they are bound to attract attention. So, we’ve compiled a list of TEN of the best SEO tips to be found on the Internet. Don’t believe us? Find out for yourself now!!

Let your content drive your website. Content is the king, the absolute truth and nothing but. Well-researched, authoritative and unique content that uses the keywords strategically to obtain top rankings, and attract inbound links is a MUST! Never compromise with the quality of your site’s content.

Another royalty you can’t do without are Links! Focus on building a network of the best quality backlinks for your website using your top keyword phrase(s) and your website name. Only link with sites that can offer you something substantial to chew up on. If it’s not good, don’t bite the bait!

Are you suffering from Pagerank obsession? Don’t! Pageranking, despite what many SEO experts say, are just a small part of your SEO plan. The ranking algorithm is complicated; believe us when we tell you, a lower pageranked site can actually surpass a higher ranked site. So get a good night’s sleep and rethink your SEO strategy. Pagerank is a great determination of a websites popularity, however, it won’t be the major factor in gaining website traffic.

Stay fresh and update regularly. Yes, if you want to climb higher on search rankings ladder, make sure your site has fresh and useful content. Regularly updating your website’s content is the best way to catch the eye of the search engine robot.

Dig for top search phrases instead of single keywords. The search phrases used by people and incorporated in your content will make it easier for your website to show up as a relevant search result.

Getting localized is also a very important SEO tip that few may share with you. When developing the content for your site, make sure you keep ‘localization’ in mind. This helps you win brownie points with the local users and the cherry on the top is that you get local customers. We recommend creating state and city specific pages to attract website traffic that would have previously never visited your website.

Always use text links on your website pages if using Javascript for image maps, image links, or drop down menu. Since spiders don’t follow Javascript properly, text links are crucial from a SEO point of view. If your navigation links are images, place text links somewhere on your pages as well.

Always keep SEO in mind when designing your website. More importantly, your website designer must be an expert at Organic SEO. Try to design a simple website that doesn’t have heavy Flash. Less graphics will give you better crawl-ability and trust from the search engines. This is because search engine robots crawl the text rather than images or Flash. Also ensure that your pages load quickly, we believe this will make a positive impact for the search engines.

Use search friendly URL’s and meta tags, this will help to improve your rankings. If you change your URL’s for sub pages, consider using 301 redirects to fix the file names and transfer page value.

Finally, proof read your all your content including taglines, copy etc. and make sure all the links are working before you go live with it. Always provide quality information on your website, getting the visitors is a hard and time consuming process, so make sure your website visitors like what they find when they visit your website!

My opinion is this, a great website is an always evolving and improving website. So work hard, and reap the benefits over time!

Search Engine Optimization Guide for Webmasters [senior Hs Paper]

explorercomp — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 04:59:04 +0000

Introduction

Search Engines have developed into the Internet’s most popular and powerful source of information, accounting for an estimated 80% of the Internet’s traffic (Heche, 2007, p. 1). As a result, website owners are realizing the power in such devises and are shifting marketing budgets into the optimization of their sites specifically for search engines. During the toddler years of search engine optimization (SEO), crafty developers took advantage of weak search engine algorithms to display their websites in top results, regardless of their site’s relevance. However, as more advanced Internet search engine technologies emerged to solve such exploits, new SEO methods were pursued (Boykin, 2007, p. 1). With the growth in search engine popularity and accuracy, and with newly emerging techniques used to target such engines, SEO has become a cut-throat competitive industry that is quickly being dominated in its utilization by big-business corporations (Murray, 2007, p. 1). Regardless of a company size and status, however, company webmasters with basic knowledge of HTML and blogging can establish top search engine rankings for websites that target niche markets with great efficiency by employing specific on-page and off-page SEO techniques.

A Search Engine Primer

Search engines did not become popular overnight. In fact, it took half a decade for the general public to catch on to the power of them. Search engines have become a woven part of society only because of their brilliant architecture; systems with frameworks so complex, yet so simple in user utilization that a novice can operate it. Concisely, the modern search engine is an intricate tool formulated to minimize the discovery time of information by minimizing result digression and maximizing result accuracy based on hundreds of relative factors. The basic functionality of a search engine includes content discovery, indexing, querying, and ranking (Fishkin, 2007, p. 4).

Content discovery is often referred to as “Web crawling”. The analogy of the “Web” is an important concept to grasp, since its analogy will act as a backbone to understanding the search engine discovery process and the terminology involved. The internet can be generally referred to as the World Wide Web, or just Web for short, because the structure of the internet most resembles the structure of a spider web (Davis, 2005, p. 1). Each of the billions of pages of content are linked together in some way or another to create an incomprehensibly large network of connections. Consequently, search engines have called their automated programs that crawl this web “bots” or “spiders”. Modern crawlers revisit indexed sites on a regular basis to look for changes or revisions. Sites are normally updated by the crawler between a one or two months time. In estimation, search engines have only crawled about half of the Web’s content pages, accounting for between eight to ten billion pages (Fishkin, 2007, p. 4).

Every page that is crawled on the Web by a search engine is placed into a gigantic database called an index or sometimes a catalogue. Massive organization is applied to the index in a way that requests can sort through billions of pages and find relevant matches within just fractions of a second. Sometimes it can take a considerable amount of time for a search engine to actually index a site after crawling it. During this time, the site will not be available on index to those searching (Fishkin, 2007, p. 4).

Content querying is the provision of an interface or gateway connecting the human user and the results waiting inside the search engine database. The results vary in type from web pages to online published word processor documents, and are returned to the user based on the criteria they indicate. The method a user might use to indicate criterion varies based on the search engine. Search engines normally provide a blank text input field in which the user can type terms or phrases into then press a button to send the query to the search engine for processing. Many modern search engines incorporate exclusive input syntaxes that a user might learn to take full advantage of the search engine’s power. Natural language searches, however, allow a user to input full sentence-structured questions instead of requiring the user to learn query syntaxes (Sullivan, 2007, p. 1). An example of syntax is placing terms in quotations. Google, the most commonly used search engine of today, uses quotations to specify results that return exact matches to all the terms in the order they are listed in quotations. Google includes ten other operators used to better define a query and home in on the target results (Google Cheat Sheet, 2007, p. 1).

Ranking becomes a search engine’s most distinguishing process, as this will determine what and how information is displayed to the user. A commonality all search engines share by nature is the organization of pages by relevancy starting first with most relevant and ending with least. The higher a page’s rank is, the higher the site’s probable relevance will be as perceived by the engine. Every search engine uses its own unique method of determining how pages rank in relation to one another, and these are called algorithms. An algorithm is a mathematical formula that will take into consideration dozens of factors that have positive and negative effects on page rank. Think of it as a set of rules that a judge uses to determine which girl wins in a beauty pageant. The winner will always showcase more than just beauty alone, but instead, indicate a deeper purpose like the reputation, talents, and even life intentions. The many factors involved in judging contestants in a beauty pageant are very much like the factors used to rank a webpage (Sisson, 2006, p. 12).

Brief History of the Search Engine

The earliest breeds of search engines were not actually search engines at all, but rather massive directories of content pages manually submitted by their authors. It was not until spiders and bots came to the scene that people began to see the power behind such tools (Wall, n.d., p. 8). Archie appeared in 1990 as the very first tool used to search pages of the Internet. It was named Archie to resemble the word “archive” without the “v”. Built by Alan Emtage, the program indexed directory listings from public FTP sites. An alternative tool emerged a year later called Gopher, which indexed solely text files instead of all computer files. Two other index systems called Veronica and Jughead searched the Gopher index servers and provided more targeted keyword search (Wall, n.d., p. 2). By 1993, a new generation of search engine emerged from a student at MIT: automated web crawling. Initially used for counting and measuring the size of the Web, the first web crawling bot on the Internet was named the World Wide Web Wanderer by its creator Matthew Gray. ALIWEB (Archie-Like Indexing of the Web) was introduced in the same year with the capability to collect page meta-data and allow page authors to submit their own content. Search engines and crawling technology wasn’t yet seen as having any true significance for society until further university experiments were done (Wall, n.d., p. 1).

As the Internet gained popularity and started appearing as a business opportunity to investors, college students began getting large funding opportunities. This boom in funding caused break-through developments such as relevancy-based indexing to occur. Corporations like Altavista, Ask Jeeves, Lycos, Yahoo, and Google in turn met at the search engine scene, each bringing their own new innovations to the table. Altavista offered a brand new method of searching for the end-user known as natural language inquiry (Wall, n.d., p. 1). Ask Jeeves was quick to mimic this technique, but also focused on building its index from web communities. A few years later, Altervista was bought by Yahoo! for 235 million dollars, which was just one of that many small steps taken toward the multi-billion dollar establishment Yahoo! is today (Olsen, 2003, p. 1). Lycos contained the largest index of any search engine of its time with more than 60 million documents in 1996, but eventually evolved into the fifth most popular web portal in the world (Sherman, 2002, p. 1). Lycos abandoned its own search engine algorithm, and began powering its search feature by Ask in 2006, which is former Ask Jeeves (O’Reilly, 2006, p. 1).

Although Google entered the scene relatively late in 1998, it still managed to ultimately come out on top from its tough search engine competitors (Google Milestones, 2007, p. 1) Through collaboration, Larry Page and Sergey Brin babied their creation until receiving more than 25 million dollars in funding in just a year’s time from its initial launch (Google Milestones, 2007, p. 3). Google partnered with AOL and Yahoo! by early 2000, which also marked the release year of the renowned Google toolbar (Google Milestones, 2007, p. 4). In 2007, Colvin of CNN reported that “Google’s figure is $149 billion and rising fast, pushing the company past most of America’s biggest, most successful, most respected corporations” (Colvin, 2007, p. 1). It is clear that Google has conquered the search engine war, rendering it as the most valuable search engine webmasters can optimize for their websites. Google has practically set the standard for other search engines that have followed the leader’s footsteps. Because of this, Google-specific page ranking factors are currently the most significant for any SEO venture because of competing search engines’ inherent similarities (Ryan, 2006, p. 1).

On-Page Search Engine Optimization

Jumping straight into SEO, it is imperative to understand that success relies heavily on the keywords that are chosen for the optimization venture. Because keyword terms can be found inside content, titles, headers, and images of a webpage, these are all considered on-page objects and therefore contribute to the optimization of the page itself. Keywords can be thought of as the foundation upon which SEO is built on, when if removed from the equation it leaves a broken structure. In relation to SEO, keywords are terms used to define the purpose of a webpage in its entirety (Fishkin, 2007, p. 9).

Commonly, there is confusion between metadata keywords and content keywords. metadata entries, which are code strings placed in the code heading of pages, are no longer used for relevancy because they were taken advantage of by having irrelevant keywords that attracted undeserved attention. For this metadata keywords are no longer used, while metadata descriptions are only used as snapshots for a few rare search engine directory page entries. Because of all this, metadata entries are very insignificant to SEO. In the world of keywords, content is king. When a search query is sent, the search engine will try to return with pages that match best to the inquiry keywords found within a page’s content (Sisson, 2006, p. 8). Since so much relies on keywords, it is common practice to conduct research to seek the right related keywords or keyword combinations that are optimizable for a given scenario. There are several free online tools available for keyword research, such as the tool suite found at http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools (Callen, 2005, p. 32)

Keywords that are too popular will actually have a negative impact on search rankings because of the overcoming competition. Instead of seeking popular solo keywords like “insurance” or “games”, it is much more effective to find a niche (Callen, 2005, p. 12). A niche homes in on the specific product, idea, or service that is attempting to be displayed in search results. When optimizing for a focused target audience, the competition is easier to outsource, and in turn will always promise high rankings when page optimization is established. Instead of seeking a single magic keyword, it is best to seek a keyword combination or a phrase that will best describe a niche specifically. Most people enter 2-5 word phrases into search queries, which ensures security with multi-keyword niches (Sisson, 2006, p. 13).

Some webmasters have tried repeating their keywords excessively on their pages to boost frequency. What these webmasters might not understand is that excessive keywording is like playing with fire, where if they get too close they will get burned. If a search engine notices an unusually excessive repetition of keywords, the engine will demote the site and may even ban it from its index completely. In contrast to this, search engines are now intelligently seeking common relationships between terms on the Web, so when keywords are used throughout a document with fluency and in good context, this can quickly benefit a site’s ranking (Fishkin, 2007, p. 9).

Keywords should be strategically placed on a webpage to maximize keyword frequency without running the risk of being seen as a keyword spammer by the search engine. If more than one keyword combination is being targeted by your site, it is important not to strand keywords together in an attempt to increase keyword relevance. In page content, header code tags will emphasize keywords for users as well as search engine spiders. Placing keywords naturally in the alt tags of content relating images will also boost page relevance, and return your site in image search results. Most importantly, naturally mentioning keywords in body paragraph text will increase keyword frequency. To reiterate however, it is important not to overuse keywords in body paragraphs, since some search engines might suspect a site with that sort of ‘keyword juicing’ as spam (Sisson, 2006, p. 13).

Linking is another imperative factor of page rankings which will be covered in greater detail in off-page techniques, but is also a part of on-page optimization. Internal linking generates a hierarchy of synonymous page rank based upon which pages are linked most. Many webmasters often do not realize they are making a mistake when chain-linking content more than two levels away from the homepage, or mesh linking. Mesh linking occurs when every page contains a link to every other page in the site, giving every page with equal importance. This means a contact or form page will rank just as high as the actual meat of the site. To solve this issue and direct the search engines’ focus towards pages of importance, a hierarchical linking system should be established. To create linking hierarchy, not all pages are cross linked, and important pages are linked to by the largest number of pages on the site (Sisson, 2006, p. 37).

Off Page Search Engine Optimization

While on-page optimization provides a solid basis for a website being recognized by spiders, it is the links from other websites that determine the rank of the recognized page. Off-page search engine optimization is mostly concerned with this establishment of inbound links to the focus website. The process is known as link building, and is by far the most strenuous aspect of SEO. A site’s page rank is determined by both the quantity and quality of its incoming links. The quality of a link is the most weighted factor, which is based upon the page rank of the site making the link. If the linked site has relevance to the site being optimized, then this is a positive detail (Fishkin, 2007, p. 26). Relevancy is determined by comparing keywords in website titles, the anchor text of the link, and even its IP address. The IP address or number value that the domain name refers to may have less weighted effect on page ranking if it shares a common third octet (Sisson, 2006, p. 43). Sites that have very high page ranks are referred to as ‘authoritative’ and will almost automatically boost the page rank of a site it links to. Two forms of linking exist: two-way and one-way.

Two-way linking is also known as reciprocal linking because it is a mutual establishment between site owners. This method is essentially a link swap. Some webmasters carry the misconception that paying for well known link exchange services will guarantee site visits, but this is only true on a temporary degree (Sisson, 2006, p. 54). Also, link exchanges are considered manipulative and have a record of incurring removal of sites from search engine indexes.

One-way link building can sometimes be considered a science and art, since many techniques are nothing short of brilliant. One scheme often used to build massive amounts of inbound links is to produce a gadget or banner that appeals to other site owners, and encourages them to take a code snippet for the gadget or personalized banner and place it on their own site. An example of this method is evident at www.nerdtests.com. This site offers a free and fun online quiz that ranks the user’s nerdiness in percent relation to everyone else who took the quiz and awards an ‘official title’ banner code based on the outcome. These banners can be found floating all around the net in user signatures of online community forum boards or even on personal blogs and provides www.nerdtests.com with an endless link base (Spencer, 2007, p. 1).

The most common and reliable method of getting back-links is submitting articles to informative websites, which usually give authors an opportunity to link to their personal site. Social bookmarking sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, and Propeller all have recently become a hit sensation among frequent internet users. These bookmarking sites provide a portal to sites recommended by other users. If the content on a site is valuable or entertaining enough to people, social bookmarking sites may be the most effective approach to off-page optimization since they are based on popularity and massive viral tendencies (Hagen, 2007, p. 5).

Method

As my primary research, I conducted an interview on October 25, 2007, consisting of ten focused questions about SEO with Bill Slawski. Bill is the President of SEO by the Sea and the Director of Internet Marketing for KeyRelevance Inc., and was directly referred to me by Rand Fishkin, one of the world’s most renowned and authoritative SEO experts. Bill is one of the founders and administrators of Cre8asite Forums, is an active correspondent for Search Engine Land, and writes a weekly column for their small business section. Mr. Slawski’s professional credentials substantiate the validity of his interview responses and provide access to exclusive insider industry knowledge. The interview was completed via electronic mail, in which Bill took full advantage of to respond with in-depth and intuitive answers complete with real-world examples.

Results

As the first question of my interview, I asked Bill how he would define SEO to the average Internet user. Bill responded, “In simplest terms, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is applying knowledge of how search engines work to make sites easier to find on the web for the audiences that those pages were intended to attract. In more complicated terms, SEO is a matter of combining an application of marketing ideas and a knowledge of search engines to help bring the right people to a site so that they will change from visitor to consumer.” This description spells out the fundamental concepts of SEO. It is important to understand SEO, in essence, is limitless in ways of targeting consumer markets. While advertising schemes might be limited to the specific targets the advertising company provides based upon the small amount of information shared with them about your product, SEO delves into your niche and allows for much more targeting flexibility.

My second question for Bill was, “In what ways is SEO more effective or efficient than other online marketing methods?” He responded saying, “Search engine optimization means being aware of how search engines might collect information from the pages of a website, and making it easy for the search engines to index the content of those pages. In effect, it means enabling a search engine to become an index for the pages of a site. It can be less expensive than using the paid contextual ads that you see displayed with search results at a search engine, or the banner ads that show up on other websites that may point to the site advertised.” This cost efficiency is an important component of why business professionals are making the leap away from conventional pay per click advertising as their primary marketing strategy and making the switch to search engine optimization.

The third question pointed towards the public view on this experts own industry. My question was, “Do you think the power of SEO is relatively undermined, or in contrast, do you think it is overplayed as an online marketing method in the industry?” He responded with, “Search is one of the commonest activities that people get involved in when the go online, so making a website easy to be found in a search engine for people who might be looking for what that site has to offer is a good idea. It can make sense to include SEO as one part of a multiple part marketing effort, and to build a strong marketing plan that includes both online and offline parts. Unfortunately, there are differing skill sets amongst people who offer SEO services – some are just better than others.” While my question was meant to explore SEO’s public relation solely, Bill brought up an extremely important reiteration of SEO’s unknown power when combined with an ultimate market plan encompassing offline target markets as well as the ones who exist online. This also adds to the concept of ‘limitless’ SEO possibilities.

I asked for my next question, “Can any website benefit from SEO?” Bill explained, “SEO is only really important to sites that want to increase their visibility on the Web. A game clan site, where everyone who needs to know the address of the site already does has no need for SEO. But, if you hope to attract visitors to your pages, it doesn’t hurt to make them as search friendly as possible. And if you want to attract people to those pages who might be interested in the content of the pages, it doesn’t hurt to try to use words on the pages that those people might try to search with on a search engine, and to do it in a manner that makes it more likely that those words will be found earlier on in search results.” Drawn from his answer is a suggestion of widely conventional use for SEO. Unless meant specifically to be concealed from Internet users, any website seeking visitors can benefit largely from any amount of SEO. Since amateur implementation of SEO is key part of this paper, the next question was very distinctive in terms.

I asked, “Is it possible for webmasters to (with fundamental knowledge of HTML and blogging) implement SEO for themselves with relatively successful results for their small websites?” Unsurprisingly, my prediction was reinforced with his answer. Bill said, “Webmasters with a fundamental knowledge of HTML and blogging can achieve some success with being found on the web, but having a good knowledge of how search engines work can help a webmaster make better choices about how their site is set up for success with search engines.” I asked, “In general, what is the timeline of results returned by SEO?” Bill responded saying, “The amount of time that it may take to achieve results may vary by the site involved and how much work it might need, the competitiveness of the market it is within, and the demand for what the site offers. It’s almost impossible to guarantee success generally, and perhaps even harder to do it within a specified timeline.” While other sources have noted results can be seen in a matter of days in some cases, it seems there is no definitive amount of time that promises results to become evident. In that, the SEO marketing solution may not always suite for website owners seeking instant Web traffic.

This question focused on SEO as a long-term asset. I asked Bill, “Do you believe SEO may become obsolete in the future?” He explained, “I don’t see it becoming obsolete as much as I see it evolving. What we considered SEO in 1998 is different than what we consider it to be now. If you look at a set of search results in Google today, you may see videos, images, news, web pages, product searches, and other results that you wouldn’t have seen even a couple of years ago. The web is changing and search engines are changing, and helping people so that they understand some of these changes and how they might impact their web sites will probably continue to be a need to be filled in the future.” This provides a fairly straight answer indicating that SEO will only continue to progress with changes over time, rendering SEO as a very reasonable long-term asset for any website.

My final and most important question asked, “In what ways might SEO be viable for businesses with niches?” Bill responded saying, “Finding a niche where you can be competitive, and where there’s a demand from consumers can increase your likelihood of success. A small business can often take advantage of working within a niche that a larger business might find to be too much work for too little return. If the smaller business has considerably less overhead in terms of cost and time, they may be able to thrive in one of those niches. By focusing upon a specific market or audience that others aren’t, it may be possible to be found easier if people want to find the service or goods or information that you provide within that niche.” This is a fabulous reverberation of how specific keyword combinations and niches interact. Focusing on smaller markets can provide a better means of success on a smaller, yet more attainable scale.

Discussion

Throughout the extent of my research, SEO had been discovered to be one of, if not the, most effective Internet marketing strategies available today. Statistics have shown that the largest magnitude of online users discover information and merchandise through the use of search engines. SEO channels that majority of Internet traffic directly into a marketable solution, idea, or product with the best cost and time efficiency. By employing on-page and off-page techniques, a webmaster with basic knowledge of HTML and blogging can supply a particular niche website with a top search engine result ranking respective to its niche search keywords. Keywords play an imperative role in the SEO venture by providing the base of the optimized structure. The keyword focus of a pre-optimized website is determined through intense research by identifying competition and analyzing keyword query frequencies using particular keyword research tools. After keywords are determined, on-page content structure and coding is the next priority, seeing as off-page link building logically requires a quality page to link to beforehand. Off-page techniques will utilize link building strategies to launch the rankings already established by on-page SEO past competition.

The product produced as a result from my intense research will enable any adventurous amateur with fundamental HTML and blogging familiarity to pursue SEO with relatively guaranteed success. My product, in the form of a website, guides the pursuer with simple and concise instructions. The website splits the SEO mission between on-page and off-page techniques which have been explained in earlier sections of this paper. Instead of discussing these techniques in non-applicable generality however, the website will demonstrate specific examples of each optimization practice with its own optimized features.

To view my final product website, click here.

For references used in this paper, click here.

SEO Strategy-Pump Up Your Page Title

explorercomp — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 04:59:17 +0000

If you’re trying to increase your search engine placement, a terrific yet simple seo strategy is page title optimization. It’s an easy exercise, and your page will show an almost immediate improvement in your search engine placement.

The improvement will be swift. So, how do you optimize your page title? Well,I told you it was easy, You simply enter your primary keyword, or keyword phrase, into the title tag in the head section of your webpage html. Now, the keyword must be the primary keyword or keyword phrase on your webpage.

A primary keyword is the word or words you would use, to most effectively describe your webpage’s content, or service. Many website builders overlook the importance of this simple seo strategy when they publish their page. Google and the other search engines attach a high value to your page title when your site is ranked for search engine placement.

When you use your primary keyword, the keyword you want people to use in finding your site, in your page title, it is automatically bolded in the search results when someone searches for your webpage. This helps your website stand out from the rest. If you are not already using your keywords in your page title, you should start using them today.

This strategy, is guaranteed to improve your seo rankings. Although this is a simple solution, it may be the most important on-site seo strategy of all. What makes this strategy so important? The search engines display your page title as the header in the search engine results, it’s the first thing your searcher sees in the results.

This golden seo strategy allows you to control the first message your visitor sees. Try this seo strategy free for 30 days, then I’m going to have to start charging. Just kidding. I know this simple seo strategy will help you to improve your search engine placement. If you would like to try a few more strategies check out my site Dr Cyberspace…the web design by seo firm, click here SEO STRATEGY

SEO Tips For Newbies

explorercomp — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 04:59:12 +0000

SEO or search engine optimization knowledge is critical for the person starting out in e-commerce. Whether you want to blog, run an online store or do anything else successfully online, you need to figure out how to get noticed by search engines so that people can find you. Understanding SEO is critical for anyone who wants to be successful in online enterprise.

An important aspect of search engine optimization is the fact that you need to invest time and effort into your website on a regular basis in order get traffic and keep traffic continuously increasing. If you allow your website to sit and collect cobwebs it won’t do much for you.

SEO Tip #1:

There isn’t a magical formula; at least not one that’s evergreen so it’s important to stay current on SEO news. Dig deep to find information and read everything you can. You’ll find conflicting information at times but knowledge is power so absorb as much SEO news as you can.

SEO Tip # 2:

Create an easy to follow design with a standard homepage, easily viewable links and a site index. This way, people and search engines can find their way around easily and so can people.

SEO Tip # 3:

Determine what your target keywords are. There are some great tools out there that can help you both for free or for a small fee. Often it’s fairly easy to figure this out on your own.

Ask yourself:

What are the top three to five words or phrases you would use if you were use to search for the product or topic you are selling? Be sure that those words are on each page of your website, especially in titles, headings and at the beginning, middle and end of each page. It’s a good idea to use variations as well to give your site further credibility and increase the Long Tail.

SEO Tip # 4:

SEO Fact : Content is king. Always will be. Don’t assume that more is better in terms of keywords. Do not fall victim to the temptation to simply keyword stuff your site otherwise two things will happen. First, you’ll get banned by the search engines and even worse, you’ll be ignored by the humans who land on your page. Both types of visitors can see through vain SEO attempts to trick you to get onto their site.

Instead, you want to target the fine line between having enough keyword relevancy to make it impossible for the search engines to ignore you but not so much that your human visitors find your content to be poor quality. Hire a professional SEO article writer if you have to in order to come across as professional. Keep fresh content on your pages and change your content regularly. You don’t have to waste what you’ve put effort and money into, instead move your old content into archives so it continues to work for you as well.

SEO Tip # 5:

Web 2.0 is all about social networking. Social networking, social book marking, forum posting and link exchanges can be invaluable If you can get high ranking websites in your niche to exchange links with you, this can help. If you are blogging, comment on other blogs in your niche to get a link back to your site and generate interest from bloggers that frequent other sites in your niche. If you use tools like Technorati, Digg, StumbleUpon and other social book marking tools on your pages with appropriate tagging, you can bring relevant traffic fairly quickly and it’s viral so others will do the same. Social networking activities are also indexed by the search engines.

In summary, there are basic to advanced seo techniques and seo tips that you can use to get noticed by the big three search engines. Your results will depend a lot on how narrow your niche is but there are some basic things you can do to be search engine friendly from the start. It’s never too late to optimize your site though so don’t lose heart if you didn’t follow this advice on your website from the beginning. Here are some basic ideas. This is not an exhaustive list but is a great place to start.

Ethical Tips Regarding On-page SEO Optimization for SEO Services

explorercomp — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 04:59:09 +0000

Search engine optimization is not an easy or mechanical task to do. In this recent arena we need to follow few things in work procedure to get proper ethical ranking. Ranking can be achieved in a hasty manner but the main thing is to carry forward that ranking in future. Nowadays we all are designing a website and then go for SEO optimization to get ranked into the search engines. Thus the competition is a major factor to get stable rankings.

Yes, it is fact that we all need superb ranking but some of us not concentrating on ethical procedures. They simply need top ranking within a quick time span to influence their clients and for that they never hesitate to accrue black hat techniques into their working methodology. Even they never think about the future progress about that website, these fake SEO peoples don’t concentrate about Google algorithms as well as Google guidelines for ethical SEO optimization.

We have to understand that ours clients are not looking for rankings rater than they are concentrating on vast unique visitors through those rankings. Basically they need more business through their website to fulfill their business goals. It is our duty to make knowledgeable our clients about that ethical SEO guideline because if they were banned by search engine after 6 to 8 months then ultimately they will suffer in every aspect. Thus it is our responsibility to show the flow chat of ethical work process to get ranked.

These are few ethical SEO tips to get stable search engine rankings.

1. Firstly we need a unique design with foremost features. Google always pay their faith to unique web designs, obviously those designs should be very search engine friendly with different kinds of search engine bots.

2. Then we need to concentrate about the age of that site. If the site is very new into the market then you have to face problems to get ranked in top competitive keywords else you can proceed for those keywords.

3. Before starting SEO work we need a quality keyword research for that site. On-page optimization is the base of any SEO optimization and keyword research is the foundation of any on-page optimization.

4. Search engine rankings are mainly depending upon the Meta title and description of every page of that website. Smart use of keywords within the title tag and Meta description is denoted as the professionalism of any SEO services.

5. Then we need to shuffle our targeted keywords with our content and that content should be fresh, catchy as well as unique for the business market.

6. We need to make modifications at our content in a regular interval to maintain the uniqueness of that content.

7. Fixing the canonical issue of that website for better result as well as optimize all images with appropriate alt tags.

8. It is better to rotate internal links of that website through that catchy content with the help of targeted keywords, because search engine crawlers as well as viewers are traveling through the links only.

9. If it is possible then place a brief description within H2 tag of that website with smart punching of targeted keywords at the header part.

10. Placing text links for internal pages is denoted as good SEO services at the footer section. We can use our targeted keywords within those texts while interlinking our important pages.

11. Never ever concentrating on any kind of black hat techniques such as placing hiding content, corking, vast use of targeted keywords within the content etc.

Search Engine Optimization – Ensuring the Best Results for your Business

explorercomp — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 04:59:02 +0000

In last, today every site wants to be featured in the top ten list of the search engine. Therefore, to reach such cliff, you need to understand the algorithm of the search engines and you should implement changes according to the search engines. In order to achieve the benefits of search engine optimization, an effective SEO strategy is necessary. One of the biggest SEO strategies is link popularity, keyword research and website marketing.

Doing the proper research and finding the correct keyword combination will bring you’re the proper rankings in the search engines and a traffic that is targeted to your site, and the added benefit is that it is free traffic. As you heard many time before content is king, your content should be structured to include the keywords that are relevant to your site, and your website needs to be SEO optimized so the search engines can spider it with ease. All the other pages on your site should revolve around a central theme and all be related in some way.

When visitors come to your website the text on the home page should explain and reflect the theme of your site and all of the other pages should relate to it. Search engine optimization or SEO is the hottest way to drive targeted traffic to your website. Your investment in the future of your website will be worth while. The reason you need to optimize your site is to get rankings in the search engines, by concentrating on search phrases and by promoting these keywords you will begin to build your rankings in the search engines.

Billions of sites are updated daily and they all need to be crawled on a daily basis. You can purchase high PR links and shorten the waiting period of getting your site in the serps. Check you site for broken links, not having links that work will have a negative effect on your sites ranking if the links stay broken for a period of time.

High quality articles are quickly snapped up and published prolifically. Every time you write an article and you get it published you receive another link pointing back to your site which will in turn increase your link popularity. Traffic is generated to your website from your signature box. This article can be freely published on a website as long as. With this wonderful innovation in web writing, each article will surely be given ample attention in terms of engine optimization and accessibility. The natural listing depends on the optimization techniques employed on and off the web site. A single article can be reprinted hundreds of times, and each time is another link back to your site. Ensure that each web page of yours would focus on a particular keyword or key phrase. If there is an article in that page, make sure that the article will only discuss and include one keyword or key phrase from the list you have made.

Getting more traffic is pointless if your site isn’t an efficient sales machine. Since there are only a “handful” of search engines that everyone uses (the major ones), this is where we place our best promotional efforts. If you encourage them to link to your site, join your newsletter, read your articles, and so on, then the traffic will increase your search engine popularity. If you only sell product, then that is what you get money for products. Traffic is a must if any online business is to succeed.

For more information about Search Engine Optimization, visit::

http://www.seo-solution-india.com

Necessity and Advantages of SEO Optimization Services to Get Ranked Quickly

explorercomp — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 04:59:07 +0000

It has been observed that all kind of small business owners are expanding their local business into global arena through internet marketing to continue their business growth. Thus they build up pretty website with their services or product gallery for enhancing their brand name in front of world wide audience.

But, how much you will be beneficial with that appealing website apart from organic search engine ranking while you are the most newcomer into this global market? A noticeable website is meager in receiving web traffic until it gets famous into the search engines through keywords. Designing a pretty website is just the preliminary step of your internet business but nothing more than that.

What are the other ideas for promoting your business brand except SEO optimization? Thinking about publishing online banners in reputed websites? Giving adds at famous same theme business websites? Circulate your business news into all possible web forums?

Trust me, these are much expensive and hazardous ways than taking advice from a professional growing SEO services. As a matter of interest, it has been seen in a recent survey that more than 95 % visitors come in through search engines. Then can you explain me, why shouldn’t a firm go for organic SEO optimization?

Don’t forget that you are investing much to build your pretty professional website and as because of your new arrival you are not popular into the global market. Here comes the necessity of professional SEO optimization. You need to promote yourself first into the search engines then you need to ride up into the top positions through keywords.

Now, if you are taking SEO optimization in a serious manner then you can realize that it is the other name of publishing your business services or products or business goals through a properly optimized website into the search engines. But, if you are taking SEO acutely, then it is none other than a promotion policy of your site through few effective keywords.

Then the question arises, why small business owners require leading SEO services? There are few reasons behind that, first reason is that to promote your website properly into the search engines is only possible when your website is optimized by relevant keywords which are effective at your business market.

The second reason is to enhance your brand promotion through an effective online campaign which will continuously increase your brand name as well as helping in the entire financial growth of your business firm i.e. rising local business to the global internet marketing arena within minimum possible time.

Only through SEO optimization you are able to receive thousands of tremendously improved qualified web traffic in other term vast organic unique visitors to your website which will produce more business to you in a very short time span.

Obviously the most important reason which will appearing at the business owner’s mind is the expenditure will be the most prominent thought in a business owners mind. Yes, if you are hiring professional SEO services for proper optimization of your websites then the cost will apparently decreasing to get popular amongst the online market area. Apart from SEO all kinds of promotional ways are most expensive and time taking processes and while doing SEO, you only need to expend a little bit of that expensive expenditure.

Another reason is the SEO knowledge what they have in different segments in SEO work process. SEO services has good number of professionally sound employees in the field of content writing, on page optimization and off page optimization and also they also have different types of SEO strategies to promote different kinds of business theme (we all can assume that the promotion policies of law based sites should not be the same promotional policy of real estate sites).

SEO services are focusing on your SEO campaign thus you need not be nervous about your SEO campaign while in the meantime you can focus on your core business and it’s strategies for enhancement. SEO services properly optimize your website for all search engines to get ranked with logical and sensible relevant keywords which are most importantly effective on your business market area.

DIY SEO – is it Worth Paying for SEO or Doing it Yourself?

explorercomp — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 04:58:58 +0000

In many ways, search engine optimisation is like plumbing. Sure anyone can do it, its not rocket science, but to do a good job, you need four basic things:

The Knowlegde
You need to know a bit about the subject. You can easily find out everything you need to know online thesedays. If you do not have the time (or the interest) to find out everything you need to know, then you can always call on the expertise of a tradesman, however calling in the experts is never a cheap option, so if you think you can do it yourself, then you should consider DIY SEO.

With search engine optimisation, you need to keep updated with new developments and changes in the rules about what constitutes good practice and bad practice (also referred to as ‘white hat’ seo and ‘black hat’ seo – a phrase derived from the old cowboy films where the goodies always wore white hats and the baddies always wore black hats). For example, paying for links on someone else’s website was seen as a good business model in the early days of SEO, and a lot of people made a lot of money out of it.

These days, you can get penalised by Google for paying for links. Where this puts services like Yahoo directory, which is a paid-for link directory, I dont know, but there is good evidence to suggest that inclusion in the Yahoo directory actually increases your site’s trust rank in google. (Very few spammers would fork out hundreds of pounds to Yahoo just to get one low converting link).

To arm yourself with the right knowlege, you need to first know the basics of SEO – there are quite a few articles online which give a good a general background in SEO. A quick search for the phrase ‘SEO introduction’ or ‘SEO tutorial’ will allow you to find them easily.

Note: no one outside google know exactly what factors and what weighting each factor of a webpage determines page rank, and opinions on certain things differ - like whether div layers or tables get better rankings, or whether using noscript tags penalise your page, so it is a good idea to read these articles with the view that they represent evidence based theories rather than actual facts.
The Tools
In order to maximise your time, you need to make sure you are using the right tools. You wouldn’t use a sink plunger to fit a tap now would you? Similarly, with search engine optimisation, you need to use the right tool for the job. There are lots of online tools to checking keyword positions, domain ages, online search engine submissions etc. Again, the rule of thumb is if they appear high up in Google for ‘SEO Tools’ then they probably work.
The Experience
The more you do something, the better you get at it. Writing descriptive, keyword rich page titles that are attractive to human activity in search engines is a fine art. Vetting partner site quality for link exchanges or finding good free directory sites to submit your url to also gets easier and quicker with practice.
The Time
Lets face it, if you had a spare 4 hours a day to promote your site, research keywords, analyse web traffic and generate updated content for your website, you would probably be on page 1 of google for most of your targeted keywords, but in the real world, most people and businesses do not have time for this, which is why some companies employ SEO consultants or search engine optimisation companies to do this job for them.
Larger companies often have experts in-house to perform this function. All too often though, the role of SEO in larger companies is attached as a secondary roll to a technical team or web designers. Sometimes this is a good idea since SEO for a single small scale website is not generally a full time job.

Should you DIY SEO?

The answer to this question depends on whether you have the time to do it, how much your time is worth, whether you need it, and whether you think someone else would do a better job of it. In the end, SEO is like having a plumber living in your house – useful for the times when you need work doing, but most of the time, you can tick along nicely without them.

The best advice is: if you can do it, do it, if you can’t then don’t (sounds obvious doesn’t it). Dont believe everything an SEO company tells you, do your own research, make your own judgements and be prepared, SEO takes months or even years to get high up in google for the most competative keywords and if you are paying a high monthly fee for SEO then it might be better to consider doing some of the work yourself or employing a junior admin assistant to perform the more mundane daily tasks like link exchange administration, or writing keyword rich content to put on your website.

The Top 10 SEO Strategies

explorercomp — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 04:59:16 +0000

Anyone who has tried to educate themselves about search engine strategies, has already discovered that there are literally millions of pages, with as many differing opinions on the subject of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). This vast amount of information on the subject of SEO, and the strategies used most often, can be found on the internet and in magazines and books. You could spend years sifting through all of the available materials on SEO and SEO strategies, to find the strategies that have emerged as the front-runners in the online marketing arena.

To speed up the learning process, you will find 10 of the top SEO strategies listed below to use as a quick guide to the search engine optimization for your website. It is recommended that you continue educating yourself further about SEO as your schedule permits. New information and strategies on SEO are added to the already “massive mix” on a regular basis.

1. Aquant yourself with KEYWORDS, and KEYWORD PHRASES. These are the words that someone searching for something on the internet uses to narrow searches, for matches closer to what they’re looking for. You can use software to help find and organize these words, or let your SEO consultant deal with this crucial, but time-consuming job.

2. “Woo” search engines and prospective visitors to your website with tantalizing titles for your website and web pages. Remember the axiom of having only one chance to make a great first impression.

3. Create website layouts and designs that pack a powerful visual-punch for visitors to enjoy. Search engines like websites with fresh and appealing designs, but even better, visitors will spread the word about the look of your website which will create a stream of curious visitors and the possibility for more sales.

4. Only use good, informative, interesting content to fill your website. If you can’t write it yourself, hire a competent content provider to create unique content for your website.

5. Add an RSS Newsfeed to your website to provide your website visitors with access to the freshest information related to their interests.

6. Find quality links to place on your website that point to other websites related to yours. Use websites with high rankings to benefit the most from placing them on your website. You can check the rank of a website using the Free Google ToolBar

7. Submit your website to a web directory. There are large directories with generalized themes or you can choose a web directory that is specific to the theme of your website. Search engines give much consideration to websites listed in web directories. Do be careful about submitting to some of the free web directories. Check them out first to ensure that they do not engage in unethical practices such as not monitoring what websites can be accepted into the directory, and having no policy against Spam.

8. Submit your website to search engines yourself or using software that makes reasonable submissions. Mass submitters can be a hindrance to the SEO of your website because they tend to zoom towards those harmful web directories.

9. Keep track of your websites positioning in search engines and make changes in the SEO of your website wherever needed.

10. Consider budgeting for an SEO expert to help you with all of the numerous aspects of SEO for your website. These experts can save you tons of time, spent learning about and performing these SEO strategies, and can also save you from spending money on SEO tools you don’t really need.