Very new ideas for the old internet

The Myth of Search Engine Optimization

There are only 10 spots in the top 10 spots. This might seem like a repetitive statement, but it is making a point. For companies to be selling the availability of 10 spots to thousands of companies makes for a mathematical anomaly that all the keyword buying in the world won’t be able to solve. The danger of all this madness is that, like with the original internet boom, the SEO (search engine optimization) boom will go bust as more and more companies get tired of spending money for results that somehow always seem to get replaced by excuses.
There are ways to naturally secure a reasonable position on search engines. They include:
Embed Keywords in Your Content – the placement of keywords (words you want your website to be categorized as and words you want the search engines to pick up on) in your page title and throughout your content will allow the search engine spiders to identify your site as you wish to be identified and place your site as part of searches for the words you select. The placement of the most critical keywords in the title tag will result in a higher search placement because the search engines place the title as the clickable link on the search engine results page. Once upon a time meta tags and meta keywords were used by search engines to evaluate content and search relevancy. This is not done anymore, partly because spammers abused it, and partly because the search engines could not figure out a way to monetize it (as they have with keyword purchases). The use of meta tags and keywords within your content is still helpful though in that they are often what is used in the description of your company on the search engine results page. By the way, make sure that while you are creating content that will be noticed by the search engines you don’t wind up creating content that is either incomprehensible or irrelevant to your readers. It makes no sense putting all this effort into getting people to visit your site if they can’t understand a word of what you’ve written once they get there.
Have a Proper Architecture – search engines cannot index pages that are more than two clicks away from your homepage, which is about the same distance the average web user is willing to travel to get at your information. It is therefore necessary to make certain that the structure of your website is constructed to maximize both search engine indexing and userability. In this case the two converge, so it is an easy condition to agree to execute.
Generate Link Relationships – to some extent, search engines rank according to some estimation of your site’s popularity. One of the parameters they use is how many other sites are linked to yours. So you need to develop affiliate and other relationships that link their website to yours. This too is consistent with general good web marketing, and therefore should not arouse too much resistance.
Search engine placement cannot come at the expense of your traditional and online marketing programs. It could, perhaps, be a component of your integrated plan, but you need to make certain it does not take over your other activities. The lure of the search engine – this idea that leads are generated by the lead itself – is very seductive, and the reason why so many companies have forsaken much of their other marketing activity for the full time management of their keyword purchasing and search engine optimization activities.
There have always been preferred places to advertise and there have always been preferred ways to generate leads – and often the only companies able to avail themselves of these top-tier opportunities were those with the financial resources to do so. Just as Time magazine has but one back cover to sell, Google has but 10 top spots for the keywords you want. If you have the means to purchase your place on that page, and you deem it to be a productive use of your marketing dollars, then you should do it. However, if you do not have the resources, and you are nonetheless spending money because some web marketing firm is promising you better placement, you are most likely throwing your good money away. Even with the pay-per-click model, which serves to reduce some of your risk, you are still paying for keyword purchase services and most likely other related services. Without spending real money you are either getting sub-par keywords or you are being placed well after the first three pages – and very few people bother searching after the third search engine results page.
If you don’t believe us, google it. You’ll see.

Tags: search engine optimization, seo

The role of the robots.txt file to improve site ranking!

Not many web master take the time to use a robots.txt file for their website. For search engine spiders that use the robots.txt to see what directories to search through, the robots.txt file can be very helpful in keeping the spiders indexing your actual pages and not other information, such as looking through your stats!

The robots.txt file is useful in keeping your spiders from accessing parts folders and files in your hosting directory that are totally unrelated to your actual web site content. You can choose to have the spiders kept out of areas that contain programming that search engines cannot parse properly, and to keep them out of the web stats portion of your site.

Many search engines cannot view dynamically generated content properly, mainly created by programming languages, such as PHP or ASP. If you have an online store programmed in your hosting account, and it is in a seperate directory, you would be wise to block out the spiders from this directory so it only finds relevant information.

The robots.txt file should be placed in the directory where your main files for your hosting are located. So you would be advised to create a blank text file, and save it as robots.txt, and then upload it to your web hosting to the same directory your index.htm file is located.

Here is examples of the use of the robots.txt file:

To block out a directory in a robots.txt file, such as a subdirectory for your online store called /store/ you would do the following: Disallow: /store/

Another example to block out your stats directory: Disallow: /stats/

You may also want to disallow individual files that you do not want searched by the search engines. For example you dont want search.php to be parsed by the Search Engines. To do this you type in the following on its own line:

Disallow: /search.php

Following the rules outlined and creating the robots.txt file, you will keep search engine spiders out of unwanted files and directories, and letting them go through the important files to see what your web site is all about!

Tags: higher rankings, robots.txt, search engine optimization, seo

Unethical SEO Practices to Avoid

SEO, or search engine optimization, is how search engines are used to maximize the chances of getting a high ranking.  As most Internet users know, you have to have a high ranking among the search engines if you want to get visitors.  Anyone who is searching for something online isn’t going to waste a lot of time by going through several pages of results before they give up and try a different search.  That second search may not even locate your web site, and your potential visitor becomes a lost visitor.

So, search engine optimization is used to boost page rankings with the search engines.  Search engines look for sites and rate them upon the number of the keywords searched appear within content on pages on the site.  They also look for lots of links.

The desire to have a high ranking with the search engines is great.  As everyone knows, you have to have a high ranking if you want to get visitors.  And let’s face it, the whole point of having a web site is to get visitors!  If you aren’t getting visitors, you aren’t improving business and you aren’t getting customers.  And your web site is totally worthless if no one is looking at it.  Search engine optimization becomes very, very important when you think about it and everything that it means.

Some may be so determined to get those high rankings that they do unethical things with their web sites in order to boost rankings.  These unethical practices are best avoided.  These practices can be changed, these unethical motives turned into ethical ones, and you can boost your site’s rankings the way you’re supposed to.  First, identify the wrong things that you might be doing.

-    Using your keywords improperly
Search engines are very clever, but they aren’t so smart that they can’t be tricked.  Search engines do search sites for content, but they can’t exactly read the content the way that human beings can.  Some web sites bury their keywords around a bunch of other words, in text that has no form and makes no sense.  Long strings of text with random words like “boating fishing hunting outdoor adventure fish boat hunting the great outdoors forestry fishing rock climbing boating water onboard Alaska” come up all the time.  Search engines may only be looking for the words “fish” and “fishing” and since those keywords appear within what seems to be content, a false ranking is given.  But don’t do this!  Customers don’t like this, and in the end “tricking” a search engine is never a good idea.  Your keywords should appear within real content on your web site.  Then you will get a genuinely high ranking.

-    Improper use of META tags
META tags are part of the html code that is used to create a web page.  The META tags are what you use to tell search engines what keywords are on your web site, what keywords you want potential visitors to use when searching for your piece of the Internet.  Some may use META tags to try and “trick” search engines in a similar way as described above.  This won’t work long, however, and search engines do not look by META tags alone.  Search engines always search content.

-    Having false content
“False” content are long strings of text that make no sense, that are only on the site to make use of keywords for search engines.  While it’s important to impress the search engines and get that high ranking that’s so valuable, it’s more important to impress your visitors.  Visitors like great content, too, and they’re going to be put off by a bunch of text that doesn’t make sense and isn’t a good read.  While it’s true that most of the content on web sites is only skimmed over briefly by viewers, you still want that content to make a little bit of sense to them.  Have good content, at least real content, and make the most out of your keywords using that content.  That’s how to get a truly high ranking with a search engine, ethically.

Tags: keywords, Meta Tags, page ranking, search engine optimization, seo

Write for Humans, Design for Search Engines

Search engine is all about content and every SEO gurus have been trying very hard to optimize their pages just for the search engine and often forgetting that the end user is actually the human reader. It is of paramount importance that a page has to be written for humans and designed for search engines in terms of SEO.

There is nothing more important than creating unique content for a site. In SEO, allocating keywords in the title, header and bold HTML tags not only helps the reader to identify the topic of a page easily but it also aids in optimization since search engine takes into consideration of the keywords in these tags.

Many writers are concerned about the perfect keyword density for the maximum benefit of SEO. Unfortunately, there are no hard figures for a perfect keyword percentage. The most important factor when creating content is to make it readable and unique. As long as the content is readable, there is no need to follow a set percentage of keyword density.

Designing a page to facilitate the indexing by the search engine bots is another important factor to consider next to content creation. A page with rich content without indexed by the search engine bots is equivalent to no content at all. To help the search engines to find the page, the navigation system and sitemap plays important roles here. It is advisable to have text links navigation so that bots can spider all the internal pages smoothly. Avoid using JavaScript and Flash made navigation system because most bots will ignore them but designer can always include a set of text links at the bottom of the page where these kinds of navigation system are used to overcome this issue.

Some search engines place great emphasis on the content near the top of a page. Therefore, it is advisable to design the layout in such a way that the content appears before other parts of the page. One example is to use the content first CSS template; it allows the navigation to appear on the left of a page followed by the content but the content is the first to appear in the codes. This method helps search engine bots to identify the important content of a page and index them since they are placed near the top of a page. Another easy work around is to employ a right side navigation menu.

The ultimate purpose of SEO is to make sure that the designated content appears in search engine according to the specific searches. Making the content readable and designing the page for easy indexing should always be the first priority for webmasters when SEO comes into play.

Thank you.

Tags: easy indexing, original content, readable content, search engine optimization, seo

Why You Should Optimize Your Website Content

Optimizing a website’s content, in order to obtain a high search engine ranking is what Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is all about. Nowadays the term SEO has become more familiar to people around the globe. If you want your website to be picked up by prominent search engines like Google, MSN, Yahoo, you will have to make use of today’s SEO techniques.

SEO techniques play an important role in improving the visibility of your website in search engine listings. Search Engine Optimization is defined as the process of making the contents of the website relevant for both users and search engines. In other words it’s the method of attracting search engine spiders to crawl over your website to increase its ranking for specific keywords.

To elaborate – for people to find a site through a search engine, the site requires a high SERP (Search Engine Results Position) as people rarely go to the second page of the search results. This means that when a user searches with relevant keywords or phrases, they should be able to find your website page listed on the first page of the search results. What is important in respect to search engine optimization is getting a high SERP.  Many different SEO techniques are used by SEO companies to get high Search Engine Result Position.

Today people using the search engine optimization technique as an effective method for increasing the relevance of a particular website. Search Engine optimization is a hyper – competitive tactic which requires acute focus and an exhaustive understanding about the search engine algorithms and how the robots operate.

The commonly accepted technique in SEO is the method of including unique phrases into the content of websites and thereby making sure the content is indexed by search engine robots. This can be done by inputting articles or other writings in the website containing your target keyword phrases for which you want your site to achieve high search engine rankings. This method is commonly accepted as the secure and cost effective method of increasing the traffic of the website.

SEO techniques like spamdexing and black hat SEO will harm the search engine experience of the user. Using these techniques may lead to your website being banned by search engines and should be avoided.

Another important method for increasing web traffic is to code the content of the web page with meta tags to optimize the keyword. This will enable search engines to index the web pages easily. Many other factors such as the architecture, structure, pagerank and design of the web page also contribute to your website’s successful ranking.

What is the business benefit you gain by optimizing your website using effective SEO techniques? The answer is very simple free targeted traffic. And targeted traffic means better conversion ratios and higher ROI for your business.

Tags: content optimization, search engine optimization, seo, website optimization

Search Engine Optimization – A different perspective

The best source of qualified, targeted traffic is search engine traffic. But millions are still unaware of this fact. The most baffling part is even people involved in an online business are unknown to this fact. Some would say, there would be no SEO companies if most knew it. That’s a truth too.

Where does a website go wrong in being search engine friendly ?  The answer to this is that it goes wrong as soon as it is started by a web designer. The lack of knowledge or complete illiteracy of SEO on the part of most web designers is the key problem. The second step where the website owners go wrong is the choice of an experienced and skillful seo expert. Tracking down someone good is not that difficult. The key to finding someone with reasonable skill is clear communication. When you interact with someone, you will find out the expertise level, the experience, search engine parameters and algorithm knowledge and also some references. These should be enough to verify YOUR seo expert. A couple of minor but sometimes reflective aspects are – mode of payments and his own website rankings. While varied mode of payments reflect an established company or individual, his own website ranking should provide a lot of insight in to his seo skills.

Search engine optimization at the inception of the website or designing of the website is the best way to go about. There are a lot of optimization companies which offer web designing and development. A lot of people actually opt to get a site designed by a seo company in order to make it search engine friendly right from the start. Why not all ?

Tags: search engine optimization, seo

Reasons To Ignore Toolbar Pagerank Updates

There seems to be this hysteria around Google and its Toolbar updates.  Maybe it relates to webmasters and web designers thinking that once Google make this fabled toolbar update that their website will magically jump up in the SERP’s.  Well I cannot say this clearly enough but if this is what you believe then you will be sadly disappointed.  Google just don’t work this way.

I see many, many articles, posts and blog comments by interested onlookers and self-declared SEO experts about the upcoming, and according to some people, well overdue, toolbar pagerank update.  I have one quote I would like to share with you, from Matt Cutts who is one of the head Google Search Engineers, “Toolbar Pagerank updates are a non-event at Google”.  The main reason Matt says this is because pagerank is updated constantly and the toolbar pagerank is only a snapshot of the real pagerank.  So this being the case once the snapshot of the real page rank is taken and assigned to the toolbar database it will have no affect on how Google actually view or rank the website in the SERP’s.  Fretting and stressing about where the toolbar pagerank update has gone is pointless because your web page already has a pagerank assigned to it, you just can’t see a little green bar.  It’s just so teasing by Google isn’t it!!

So, what should we do now that we have decided that checking your toolbar pagerank and those terribly inaccurate pagerank predictors is a waste of our time?

Well, find some good articles on SEO.  Read them.  Find more.  Read them.  Absorb as much information as you can about SEO and online marketing.  Read about the website language your website is coded in.  A common language nowadays is PHP.  Research keywords and how to find good keyword phrases.  Take a proactive approach and make some modifications to your site that you now know are correct SEO techniques.

If you have already got web pages in the SERP’s then look for where you have 2 pages with 1 indented and maybe make some small modifications to the page that is the indented result and experiment with it a little.  Keep a diary of your changes so that if you need to trace back to what changes you made you can.  If they get a positive result then you can apply the exact same changes across other pages or if they are negative in the SERP’s then you can start again from where you were before.

Give at least a week or two in-between making changes so that you can know exactly what affect your change had in the SERP’s.  Make only one change per page so that you can monitor that particular change vs. SERP’s rankings.

Tags: Internet Marketing, Melbourne, Online Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, search engine optimization, SEM, seo, Web Marketing, website marketing

How is Directory Submission helpful in Search engine optimization?

What is directory submission? How does it help in the web site promotion? Many think directory submission is similar to the data entry jobs and they assume it to be very simple and easy. Sites like yahoo, Google etc have huge web directories similar to the phone directory we use. These directories are store houses of relevant information about business concerns and web sites all over the world. Thus for promoting a web site its details are submitted to the directory in exchange for a small fee.

Again this directory submission can either be done manually or implemented through automated services. When someone submits his web site to a directory human editors have to go through them to check quality and other guidelines. With millions of web sites coming in daily it is not easy or it is very stressful to go through them and check for quality. So automated directory submissions was invented to check for the submission guidelines. The advantage of this automated submission is that it is easy and less time consuming. It automatically checks and submits without delay.

But what really matters is whether the web directories can accept automated directory submission as they are very strict about the guidelines. Moreover if the category to which the submission is made is not chosen properly then it loses its purpose. You cannot expect an automotive service to analyze which category your submission is best suited don’t you? Thus though the time factor favors automated directory submission it still has a long way to go to outbid manual services.

Any product or service hitting the public market needs to be advertised. There are various ways and means through which this advertisement can reach the general public. The print media, roadside banners, brochures, graphic boards etc are some of the familiar marketing techniques followed. Created a professional website to promote the business is the new and trendy marketing tool undertaken today to expose a business. Imperative features like the SEO, SEM, directory submission, link building etc help to increase the search result when someone searches in the search engine.

The web site payout along with the catchy content and tags should be competent to bring in customer traffic. And to enable this many factors are concerned imperative like the SEO, SEM, directory submission, link building etc. any business concern which takes off as a fresher must give away a press release and do the Online Directories and Search Engine Submissions. Press Release is nothing but a public relation announcement about the new business prospects. The information provided should be 100% original and no false or exaggerated content should be focused on. This is the main door which opens up to the public who will trust what they see or read from this press release. This can also be done during a course of a business when they roll out a new product or have introduced or opened a new store.

Tags: online directory submission, Press Release distribution, search engine optimization, SEO packages, SEO Services, Website Promotion

Five Common Myths About Search Engine Optimization

Picture this scene, an adolescent boy walks into a barber shop and says to the barber, “Don’t touch me, I’m only here because my mom forced me.” Search engine optimizers are sometimes put into the position of the barber. They are knowledgeable and willing to work on their client’s site, but the client doesn’t want any modifications done to the text that is visible on her web pages. This kind of dilemma occurs due to general misconceptions about search engine optimization. Let’s look at these misconceptions.

1. SEO only involves writing meta tags and working on “invisible” code

Many people want to get a high ranking for various keywords or keyword phrases, but if you look at the text on their web pages you can hardly find these vital words. They come to a search engine optimizer and think that he or she will sprinkle these words into the meta tags and it will work like magic. This is a major misunderstanding.

It is true that your main keywords and key phrases should be in your title tag and your description meta tag, and even in the keywords meta tag, but they must also appear on the page itself and they must appear in some strategic places on that page. Some clients say, “But I like the way it looks now.” You may like the way it looks, but the search engines will not recognize that your page is truly about Electronic Widgets unless these words appear in headlines on the page, in the opening paragraph, in the file or domain name in link text and in the body text of your page.

So, by all means if you already have copy that works, that can convert visitors into buyers or otherwise accomplish the purposes of your site, keep it. But you should also be ready to listen to what the optimizer has to say about modifications that will enable search engines to select your site when a potential buyer makes a query for your key words or phrases.

2. Search Engine Optimization is Tricking the Search Engines

Some clients say, “Don’t touch the visible copy but put in the modifications invisibly.” Using invisible text is something that can get you banned from a search engine. The main purpose of search engine optimization is to give your website the best possible chance to come up in good positions when someone makes a query for your keywords or key phrases. The key to doing this is to design web pages and write copy that is intelligible to search engines, without sacrificing the experience and understanding of your end-users, the people who visit your site. So, don’t ask your SEO professional to try to trick the search engines, but work with him or her to present your website in the best possible way.

3. Search Engine Optimization deals mainly with onsite modifications

Even if your website is well designed, has proper meta tags and has keyword-rich text, this alone does not guarantee that your site will rank high in competitive queries. All of these factors, design, meta tags, and copy, are on-site factors. Search engines certainly take them into consideration, but they also value off-site factors such as how many high quality or authoritative websites link to you. This means that hand-in-hand with your on-site optimization you and your promotion team will have to embark on a campaign to get links to your websites coming from websites that are already highly regarded by the search engines and by the public in general.

4. Search Engine Optimization works instantly

Don’t expect to get a flood of traffic right after your site has been optimized. Some search engines work in a fairly rapid manner, but the main search engine at the present moment, Google, is believed to have deliberately put an aging delay into its algorithm. This means that it may take several months before your site makes it into the top results for your particular category, especially if it is a newly created site. During this initial period you will also have to consider using other promotional methods such as pay per click advertising, article marketing, joint ventures, paid advertising in ezines and offline advertising.

5. Search Engine Optimization is Prohibitively Expensive

While it is true that very large organizations, ordering services from the top SEO companies, can end up spending thousands of dollars on their optimization campaigns, search engine optimization can be the most inexpensive and cost-effective option for web site promotion.

If you launch a modest pay per click campaign and pay five cents per click and get 100 clicks per day, then your cost is $5.00 per day or $1825 per year. If you learn how to optimize your pages by yourself you may be able to get natural search engine traffic without paying the pay per click fees. This is in fact what many webmasters do. Or, if you opt for a modest search engine optimization package from a professional you can end up spending less than the pay per click fees.

So the next time you hear one of the myths about search engine optimization don’t accept it blindly.

Tags: myths, search engine optimization, seo

Creative Search Engine Optimization – A Case Study

Search engine optimization this and search engine optimization that. You read and hear about it all day, but what about your site? While there are plenty of articles providing useful information, this article shows you how a real world example met with success. The point of this article is to emphasize creativity when approaching tough optimization situations.

Problems for BusinessTaxRecovery.com

In November of 2004, our firm took on the seo marketing for BusinessTaxRecovery.com. The site was being promoted through offline activities and pay-per-click campaigns. No effort had been made to achieve high rankings in Google, Yahoo or MSN.

Keyword analysis revealed that combinations of the root keywords, “business” and “tax” were going to be difficult to attack. The primary problem concerned government agencies with web sites. The IRS site, for instance, had roughly 9,680 inbound links and an absolute ton of content. State agencies weren’t far behind. The California tax agency site had roughly 7,000 inbound links and, again, tons of content.

For a final nail in the coffin, the client informed us the business was cyclical with the busiest months being January through April when people focused on taxes. The site absolutely had to rank highly during this period. We had two months to achieve results.

Gulp!

The Solution for BusinessTaxRecovery.com – 140,000 Hits

After staring at a Salvador Dali painting for a few hours, we came up with a solution. It involved a combination of internal site page focus, meta tag optimization, link exchange and massive article promotion. The results produced 145,828 hits from January through April, with only 5,000 coming from the pay-per-click program.

The first step was to change the focus of the site from the home page to the article page. Jumping the tax agency sites on keywords such as business tax and taxes was impossible in two months, so we didn’t even try. Instead, we decided to focus on the keyword phrase “business tax articles” and bring people into the site through the article page. Meta tags were optimized and a link exchange program undertaken. The key to campaign, however, was a strong article promotion campaign.

Since taxes are confusing, it seemed obvious that an article campaign focusing on tax information would meet with success. Boy, did it. Approximately 35 articles were written, published and submitted to article directories. Since the articles were timely, they were snapped up and published. The articles produced direct traffic to the site as well as numerous inbound links because of the link created in the article byline.

As for the search engines, we focused on everything but Google. We expected nothing from Google because the major content and meta tag changes would take six to eight months to show results per the usual practices of Google. In reality, it didn’t matter. The Yahoo and MSN search engines produced big time.

In mid-January, the site went to number 1 on MSN under “business tax articles.” By the end of January, Yahoo was also listing it as number 1. MSN started listing it at number 1 for “tax articles” in February. The combination of these listings produced a significant amount of traffic, conversions and a very happy client.

Can we go on cruise control now? No! With the end of the tax season, the traffic to the articles page of the site has dropped by 75%. Nobody is looking for tax information after April 15th, so this is hardly surprising. The promotion of the article page was simply a short-term solution to a difficult situation. While it should produce traffic during the first quarter of each subsequent year, it is not a year-around solution.

Over the next six months, we will focus on the long-term goal of jumping over the tax agency sites for keywords such as “business taxes”, etc. It is going to take a lot of patience, but will eventually produce a significant amount of business for the client.

Creativity is often the key to conquering seo situations. Blindly slapping up new meta tags and links isn’t always the best answer. Sometimes, a little pre-emptive consideration can yield amazing results. It did in this case.

Tags: search engine optimization, seo