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SEO and Common Sense

Business Blogger — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:27:21 +0000

“After reading this article, I couldn’t think of a better way to explain SEO”

-Editor

The fact is every search engine has a different formula to accord ranking for a Web page. Keyword-rich copy that the search engines favor may not ideally form the text -especially not on the front page! Using flash animation and of graphics may make the site appealing, but as the search engines can not index these well, one has to inevitably use gateway pages.

Some business owners may argue that their sites need to be one up on the others and would want liberal use of flash animation and lots of graphics, They may be somewhat disinclined to change this attitude just to satisfy the search engines.

There are many web developers who burn the midnight oil examining search engine results and trying to figure out each search engine’s methodology or algorithm for high rankings. As a matter of fact, there have been scores of software programs written over the years to unravel the algorithms to generate high-ranking pages for each engine. The problem is like a musical chair – by the time you arrive at a formula for an algorithm, the algorithm will change and the new algorithm must be cracked again. It is best this type of time-consuming method is avoided.

Notwithstanding the fact that search engines have slightly different algorithms which they keep changing, all search engines accord priority to the same set of things that real visitors look for in a Web site.

You do not need any technical expertise to know what parameters are needed for SEO. Sheer commonsense should suffice. What all search engines will uniformly expect in web pages are – an easy neatly coded design, an imaginative straightforward navigation, crisp yet well drafted copy, titles / meta tags that facilitate easy identification of relevant keyword and phrases and links that exactly describe what can be found at the site.

Writing Keyword-rich content does not necessarily mean one has to compromise on providing correct and appropriate information to the visitor. Good content can be written in a way that will fully drive home the benefits to the user while suitably utilizing keyword phrases. It may be seemingly difficult but possible by a competent content writer. The advice is to engage a professional content writer and not somebody obsessed with SEO.

It is once again an act born of common sense. Web with skillfully written keyword rich content have the potential to achieve high rankings for many years regardless of search engines changing algorithms. Still more importantly, they will also be a runaway success with the site visitors.

Most web developers are excessively fond of flash animation and graphics and willing to even forego appropriate content. Clients who want high rankings and lots of traffic also refuse to forfeit the avoidable graphics and flash animation. Now, it is to an extent true that some search engines have started reading the content of flash files.

A flash presentation on a site may appear exciting the first couple of times one views it, but thereafter it will be irksome when the visitor is not able to get the precise information he or she wants. And Why not have your cake and eat it too? – By using permissible amounts of flash in select places along with justifiable content. At the end of the day, most people are looking for exact information on the types of products or services in concise language, preferably on the main page of the site. Let us not forget that is exactly what the search engines also want to provide higher rankings.

The heartening fact is, as the Web matures, more and more business site owners are realizing that their fanciful sites do not fetch much traffic as the competitor’s site that provides strictly business information bereft of all ostentation. Thus there is the new trend of creating a couple of additional sites purely for SEO purposes.

It is said, and rightly too, that the single most important part of optimizing a site and getting it rank well in the search engines is content. Write a new page of content for your site at regular intervals and your website will climb the ranks. With irrelevant or inadequate content, the website will soon become a disaster whatever its other merits.

Of course, content need not be mistaken for pages of mere text. It may include a shopping cart filled with products and product descriptions as also downloadable gadgets and gimmicks. There are some imaginative developers who add jokes, anecdotes, and stories of success associated with their products. As long the written material is relevant to one’s business, website can legitimately aspire for better rankings.

Guided by commonsense, let us take following steps for higher rankings by search engines:

Provide simple straightforward and easily comprehensible information.

* Avoid too many technical jargons as it is not the place to display one’s expertise but to remain user-friendly.

* Try not to employ some clever tricks. Search engines are any day smarter than you. The whole effort will prove counter-productive as the search engines may even penalize you for these antics.

Make the URL for the site clear and relevant and acceptable to crawlers

Put yourself into the shoes of a random visitor and ask the question – is this page well-structured and offers me right and adequate information about what I am seeking?

* Reliability of information is of paramount importance. You will have an easier time ranking highly if your site offers established and trustworthy information ant the content is devoid of too many hollow superlatives.

There is no denying that it takes time to achieve SEO. Much of SEO is based on other sites that link back to your page, but then you have no direct control over that aspect. All you can do is to focus on what you have control over, which is making your page as compelling as possible.

About the Author: Search Engine Genie is a Leading SEO Company and SEO Consulting Services to its US, Canada, and UK clients.Search Engine Genie is a Great resource with 75 plus Free webmaster tools, forums, SEO Articles, SEO Blog and more. Contact us at support@searchenginegenie.com (or) Call us at 1-714-516-8845.

Use of Keywords

Business Blogger — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 20:05:26 +0000

At the heart of successful SEO is determining what keyword or keywords to use when optimizing a website. The prevalence of a specific word or phrase on a webpage is critical to influencing SERP (Search Engine Result pages) ranking. In most cases websites should be optimized for multiple keywords, and a simple way to do this is to optimize different sections or pages with different keywords.

Of course, there are exceptions to this approach.Below are some basic questions to ask when considering keywords to focus on. Once a keyword(s) is selected it should serve as the focus of a site’s SEO efforts.

1. Does anyone search for the word on search engines?

If the site is about an eating establishment, what words would people use to search for the site? Restaurant, café, diner… Does anyone use the word “eatery”?

2. Which words does the site’s target audience use?

Regional diction complicates keyword selection if a site is aimed at a large geographical area. For example, a housing site for the English-speaking world can use “apartment” and do well in the United States, but it wouldn’t do as well in other countries like the United Kingdom where “flat” is much more commonplace.

One must consider more than just geography when selecting a keyword. There are many factors that influence how an audience might search for a website. If the target audience of a website about a specific chemical consists of people with a science background, it would be best to focus SEO on scientific keywords that this audience is likely to use. A different website may be marketing a medical drug made up of the exact same chemical. In this case the target audience would be the general public, and it is unlikely that this audience will use scientific words or phrases when using a search engine to learn about the pharmaceutical.

3. How competitive is it to rank well with a specific keyword?

Ranking well on results pages for “restaurant” is very tough, since there are millions of sites for restaurants. While other words like “diner”, “café”, and “eatery” are still very common on websites, they are far less common than the word “restaurant.” It is therefore easier to influence the search engine rank of a restaurant website using these less-common words instead. Due to the difficulty of ranking high in search engine results for an extremely competitive keyword such as “restaurant”, SEO professionals will usually focus on more specific words or phrases. For instance, a local pizza restaurant does not want or need to appear in search engine results for everyone around the world who searches for the term “pizzeria”. If the local pizza restaurant is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, DC, it would make a lot more sense to focus SEO efforts on phrases such as “Washington DC pizzeria” or “Georgetown pizzeria.”

4. How does one find out words that are commonly used by a specific audience?

There are several ways to answer this question. For highly specialized sites, the SEO professional’s clients are often the best resource since they will know best what words are used in their specialized field. One useful tool is Google Suggest. Google Suggest lists the number of results that the search engine presents for a specific keyword. This can be helpful in determining the relative popularity of different keywords one thinks the target audience may use to find one’s site. Other tools include keyword selector tools that will read the pages on a website and suggest keywords to the SEO professional based on their prevalence and the presence of synonyms on the site’s other pages.

A website’s traffic analytics program is a great resource for revealing what keywords people already use in search engines to locate one’s website.

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Daniel Dare

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Increase Backlinks and Technorati Rank Using Mixx

Business Blogger — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:47:22 +0000

Backlinks is the well-known fact that affects your website search rankings. Many of the webmasters opt for the easy and more expensive way such as Text Link Ads. But, SEO copywriters always put efforts to build not only search engine friendly content, but also good and creative content that would force people to link back to it.In this post, I am going to show you one easy technique to increase your number of quality backlinks and also to improve your blogs Technorati Rank; all with the help of Mixx.

If you are familiar with the social bookmarking, social networking and social media sites, then you must have heard about Mixx.com. For those that are not familiar with this service, I strongly suggest you try it.

Not necessarily because of the traffic that it could provide – which is currently way below services like Digg, Reddit or StumbleUpon – but mainly because is one of the few services that are still not “infected” with trolls, down-voters and spammers. On Mixx you can still find content worth reading and bookmarking and also, Mixx is of great help when it comes to what I’m about to share with you.

How to Increase backlinks and Technorati rank using Mixx.com?

If you don’t know, let me tell you all bookmarks added to Mixx are “do follow” links. Sure, they are marked with rel=”bookmark”, but that does not negatively affect the link.

Follow these things to make better use of those links:

Create a profile

And not just a profile, but rather start building a solid profile. Submit quality content, content that will attract votes. Considering that Mixx has been recently launched compared to other such services, you can still build a power user profile.

You profile page

This page contains links to all stories you’ve submitted. On Mixx you are allowed to submit your own stories, but encouraged to use moderation and common sense. Again, all links are followed by search engines; the profile page is indexed and gets Page Rank.

Power users/ Super Mixxers

It’s easier to get in touch and collaborate with power users on Mixx and just as your profile is indexed so is theirs, but only with more relevance and even higher Page Rank. After friendly helping them out, I’m sure that most of them wouldn’t mind submitting some stories for you.

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Robin Dale is the publisher for www.teeky.org, we offer useful & quality articles and news about Search Engine Optimization, Internet Marketing, Dedicated Server Hosting, Windows VPS Hosting UK, Linux VPS Hosting UK, e-commerce hosting, cPanel Hosting, hosting tips & UK Web Hosting.

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Core Differences Between Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing

Business Blogger — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:37:01 +0000

I have had a lot of people ask me about the differences between Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing. There seems to be a lot of confusion between these terms in everyday use. However, their explanations are simple, to the point and concise which makes distinguishing between one and the other very easy.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. Typically, the earlier a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines. This gives a web site web presence.

As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.

The acronym “SEO” can also refer to “search engine optimizers,” a term adopted by an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees who perform SEO services in-house. Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design. The term “search engine friendly” may be used to describe web site designs, menus, content management systems and shopping carts that are easy to optimize.

Another class of techniques, known as black hat SEO or Spamdexing, use methods such as link farms and keyword stuffing that degrade both the relevance of search results and the user-experience of search engines. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques in order to remove them from their indices.

Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion. The industry peak body Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), also includes search engine optimization (SEO) within its reporting, but SEO is a separate discipline with most sources, including the New York Times defining SEM as ‘the practice of buying paid search listings’.

The explanations above have been taken from Wikipedia and clearly show the differences between one and the other. So, Search Engine Optimization is about increasing visibility to search engines and to generate traffic from search results and to increase the positioning of a web site in search engines, whereas, Search Engine Marketing involves paid listings in Search Engines such as Google’s Adwords, to ensure that you will come across highly in search results. I believe that Search Engine Optimization is more powerful and will be much more long lasting in continuing to generate quality traffic to a web site as long as quality content is kept a constant. There is no need to use paid listings although, budget permitting, it can be rather useful.

The Effects of Web Design and Search Engine Optimization – Marketing and Social Media Promotion

Business Blogger — Mon, 25 May 2009 19:50:40 +0000

In today’s fast paced world, technology dictates that people need to keep up with growing trends in society as well as their chosen career paths. If people are not able to do so this can lead to you losing your job or not being able to get that promotion that you have an eye on for a very long time. This can lead to a lot of frustration in your daily life which can ultimately lead you to being very stressed and can further implicate negative job performance results. This is why I find that keeping up with current trends – in small increments – and sticking to proven daily techniques, makes it possible to turn any online business into a success.

Online marketing techniques involve starting a web site from scratch with internet marketing and SEO in mind -thereby ensuring that you are not only developing your website with the best practices but also opening yourself up to a wider market for search engine optimization.

Search engine marketing is an exact science that needs to consistently be kept updated with the latest technologies and knowledge that allow for precise screening, understanding, analyzing and implementation. Social media marketing together with search engine optimization and search engine marketing can greatly impact the result of a web sites revenue that is created from the promotional efforts, because you will find that some trends are growing every day and the market changes almost consistently you would have to be crazy not to make the very best of search engine marketing . It is one of the simplest ways to gain exposure for the company and the whole web site as well as keeping in mind that the results and effects of the marketing are measurable down to the smallest point, lead and/or sale.

Taking into consideration that there are various companies out there that can produce the results that you want; finding quality would have to be on the top of your list. If you search Google to find your business and the number of other web sites that offer the similar services that you do, it is likely that you will come up with hundreds of thousands of results and maybe even millions. Therefore the company that you hire should be able to properly determine your niche and be able to market to the best of their ability to that niche.

Search engine optimization, search engine marketing, social media marketing and on site optimization as well as the relevant on site optimization and navigation when designing a web site is very much understated in today’s online business society.

Almost everyone is capable of designing a web site but website design in itself is just not enough. Getting a friend, your son, your wife, your neighbour, or your seventeen year old nephew who has managed to push out of view websites in his time, is not going to make a difference in the long run but if you’re willing to spend thousands upon thousands of rands on advertising then go ahead. You might end up finding that the website remains dormant for many years while you’re competitors continue to rank up and make more money than you will ever and leave you crying for more customers. If this is the way that you wish to go then you should go ahead and continue with your own ideas.

Engage in constructive and inquisitive conversation with your selected company – Four all important questions you should be asking

But the idea of what I’m trying to say is that web designing and development in South Africa is very understated speak to your desired search engine optimization company or web design company or a company that does both and engage in proper and an inquistive manner and ask all the right questions such as:

How does this help me?

How does it generate sales and or leads?

How are results measured?

What are my options?

The more questions you ask the more likely it is that you will understand how web designing, development and such engine optimization go hand in hand and you may be pleased with the results and you may even want to do with trials before you going head and signed a new contract I hope that this helps your understanding of what’s a change and optimization as well as when development can do for you and your company.

For a telephonic assessment contact us on 079 343 444 3 or, if you have several questions that you would like answered, you can contact us via e-mail so that we may send you a list of our documentation.

Dalesh Kowlesar