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Why is SEO Important |
By William Smith March 28th 2011 |
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a powerful online
marketing strategy. When done correctly, millions of online
searchers can find your site among millions of top search
results. Many website
owners and builders consider SEO as an afterthought- after
the site has already been built. If you are about to create
a new site or redesign an existing one, understanding how
the search engines
work, how your target audience searches, and how best to
design your site from the get go can save your company
thousands of dollars in time and expenses.
So Why is SEO That Important?
Search Engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing along with
Hundreds of Business Directories are the main way internet
users discover websites. Various resources confirm this
statement, and the
percentages generally range from 62 percent of Internet
users to 96 per cent.
A Study conducted by NPD Group, a research organization
specializing in consumer purchasing and behavior, tested the
impact of search engine listings and banner advertisements
across a
variety of websites to determine which marketing medium was
more effective.
In each situation, search engine listings came out on top.
They found consumers are five more times likely to purchase
your goods or services after finding a website through a
search engine rather
through a banner advertisement.
Jupiter Media Metrix, another Internet research firm,
determined that 46 percent of consumers go to a search
engine and type the product or service name as a search
query when they are looking for a product or service to
purchase online.
Search engines and directories average over 600 million
searches per day. Therefore, regardless of the percentage
value is a s low as 28 percent or as high as 96 percent,
millions of searches are
performed everyday. Properly preparing your website for
search engine optimization increases the probability that
web searchers will visit your site. |
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SEO: Free Organic Traffic |
By William Smith June 29th 2010 |
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This article is about getting free, organic traffic
from the Search Engines. Most people know that there are
three major Search Engines, namely Google, Yahoo and Bing
(formerly MSN). Each Search Engine's algorithm is different
but their core structure is the same. That's why if a site
is ranked well in one Search Engine, it would probably be
quite close to the top in the other ones, too.
So the question is, how does one get a website to the top of
Google, Yahoo or Bing? No one, except those select few
working in these Search Engine companies knows the exact
algorithm they use to determine the rankings of websites.
But through experience, webmasters can make fairly
intelligent guesses. That's how the whole science of Search
Engine Optimization (or SEO) came about.
Generally, there are two parts to SEO. Firstly, there is
on-page SEO and secondly, there is off-page SEO. Search
Engines rank each individual web page, not just a website.
Therefore, on-page SEO refers to what is on the web page
that will cause the Search Engine algorithm to rank it
highly. Likewise, off-page SEO refers to the factors outside
of that web page that cause it to rank well in the Search
Engines.
This article will focus on on-page SEO.
As far as on-page SEO is concerned, the two most important
things the Search Engines look for are firstly, the title
tag and secondly, the content on the web page. Title tags
are also called h1 tags in HTML or computer language. The
text that you type within the opening h1 tag and the closing
h1 tag is the title for the article. This is the primary
thing the Search Engines look at to determine what a web
page is about. Thus, if a web page is about sports cars, a
title might be 'The Top Ten Selling Sports Cars in 2009'.
Good on-page SEO is where the title matches what many people
are searching for in that niche. Therefore, in the title
above, if there are many people searching for 'top ten
selling sports cars 2009' or 'top selling sports car' or
'best selling sports car' or 'top ten sports cars' and the
like, the web page above would rank highly in the Search
Engines. This is why keyword research (that was explained in
part 2 of this series of articles) is so important. Accurate
keyword research will dig out the search terms most people
are using in any particular niche.
Besides the title tag, there are two other tags which are
less important. They are the description tag and the keyword
tag. The description tag refers to what the web page is
about and the keyword tag comprises of the main keywords
that characterize the content on the web page. These two are
not as important as the title tag, so as long as you ensure
the main keywords that are in the title are also in the
description and keyword tags, it would be fine. In the
example above, the main keywords would be 'top', 'selling',
'sports cars' and '2009'.
Naturally, what follows the title would be the content of
the article. Search Engine algorithms have become more
sophisticated today compared to the past. In the past,
webmasters could get away with illogical stuffing of the
main keyword into the article and the Search Engines would
rank them highly simply because the main keyword appeared
many times (whether the article made much sense or not). But
these days, Search Engines use Latent Semantic Indexing
(LSI) and other techniques to ensure that the content of the
article does make sense and provides information of value to
the reader before it ranks it highly.
Therefore, the best way to ensure the Search Engines rank
your web page highly is to provide good content in line with
the title of the article. As long as the content is relevant
and provides value, the Search Engines will rank it
favorably.
The next article will be all about off-page SEO, which is a
much wider topic. |
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GOOGLE ORGANIC SEO - Backlinks
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by William Smith June 10th 2010 |
In the past it was a relatively easy procedure to get high
rankings in the search engines. All you had to do was load
your pages and meta tags with the same keyword. Many
spammers took advantage of this and would stuff a page with
keywords. Very often this was to re-direct visitors to other
sites.
As could be expected, the search engines weren’t too happy
when searchers looking for a bus timetable, for example,
ended up at a porn site. They started to penalize sites that
repeated keywords too often or used “hidden” keywords which
used a font color that was the same as the background.
Nevertheless, so-called “on-page factors” such as the
location of keywords and their density on the page remained
a major search engine optimization (SEO) technique for many
years. However, this started to change when Google
introduced a new system to help gauge the quality of sites.
This system was called Google PageRank, or more simply PR.
Page rank was originally based on the number of links to a
site so all you has to do was gain thousands of links back
to your site to get a higher PR. Again, spamming became
commonplace with webmasters gaining lots of low quality
links from places such as free-for-all link sites.
To combat this, Google changed the weighting of low quality
sites and it became much more important to obtain links from
genuinely worthwhile sites. Another important change to
their algorithm involved the importance of anchor text.
Anchor text is the text that other sites use to link to your
site. Finally, more weighting was usually given to
thematically-related sites. For example, if you have a site
about dog collars it is better to get backlinks from other
sites related to dogs (rather than say ‘shoes’).
How can you get these illusive high quality, thematically
related backlinks to help increase your own search engine
rankings? There are many techniques to do this. These
include –
Write articles and submit them to quality article directory
sites.
Post comments on blogs (but only those that don’t use the
“nofollow” tag.
Participate in high PR forums and have a link back to your
signature.
Submit a press release about your site.
Exchange links with other high quality sites (This may be
difficult to achieve on it’s own, but you can provide an
incentive such as offering to write exclusive articles for
their site in exchange).
While Google isn’t the only search engine, it does provide
the lion’s share of traffic. In addition, the other search
engines are giving greater weighting to "off-page" factors
such as backlinks as well. With a generous amount of time
and effort you can get these quality links and see your own
share of traffic increase as a result.
There Is nothing like ORGANIC SEO!
Get On The First Page Of Google!
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THE MOST ESSENTIAL INGREDIENT FOR FREE TRAFFIC |
by William Smith June 10th 2010 |
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Search Engine Ranking is the most essential
ingredient for free traffic. Every body knows that
search
engine optimization, quality back links and original content
are the key ingredients for good search engine rankings.
Whether it is a niche one is competing in or a highly
competitive keyword, these are a must.
Search Engine Optimization is a highly competitive keyword
and a search in Google brings up 93 million search results
(93,400,000 to be precise). Sites compete with each other to
bring the best search engine optimization services. There
are those who guarantee results though not always with legal
means.
Ask anyone in which search engine they would like to rank at
the top. Eight out of ten would vote for Google. This does
not come as a surprise because Google gets most of the
search engine visitors. So if Google gives the search engine
optimization tips, what could be better than hearing it
right from the horse's mouth? Yes, Google has a whole lot of
tools to help us with search engine optimization and they
are absolutely free.
To use this facility one needs to first to set up an account
with Google after which one can go to www.google.com/webmasters.
Once here, the "webmaster help" section needs to be
selected. From there one can go to the "webmaster
guidelines" section where Google gives guidelines on design,
content, quality and other technicalities. Once a website is
ready, its URL can be submitted at http://www.google.com/addurl.html
(this is a very slow process as it may take at least six
weeks for the website to be crawled)
A Google Sitemap is a very effective tool to enable Google
to study the structure of the website and increase the
number of pages indexed. A Google Sitemap maker tool can be
downloaded for free at www.sitemapbuider.net. It’s an
excellent tool and a Sitemap is created within minutes. Once
a Sitemap is submitted Google searches for the Sitemap and
displays a message after checking the Sitemap. If there are
any errors it will indicate as to what those errors are and
the same can be rectified and the Sitemap can be
resubmitted.
Google also outlines the various do's and don'ts of search
engine optimization. Some black hat tricks like link
farming, cloaking, doorway pages are a strict no-no. One can
also find an abundance of information on creating Google
friendly sites.
So with Google on ones side, the chances of a good search
engine ranking increases.
Get On The First Page Of Google! |
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SEO TIPS - To Get A Higher Ranking |
by William Smith June 10th 2010 |
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the complex task of
improving the way your site is viewed compared to other
sites on similar topics. The way a search engine ranks your
site, and the methods it uses to compare one site to another
is a closely held secret in the industry. Experts have been
trying to decipher this mysterious algorithm for years and
even though certain aspects of it are constantly updated and
adjusted, some basic criteria are core to the way a site is
ranked. Knowing what the basic ranking criteria are is
essential to improving your ranking, and ultimately your
traffic.
One of the main considerations most search engines have for
a particular site is the concept of keywords. How many times
a keyword is used on a site, and where on the site it
appears is important to the search engine in it's ranking of
the site. Very little you can do to improve the ranking on
the site will have as big an impact as this simple fact. So
when you are setting up the site initially, think carefully
about the name you choose and be sure to include the keyword
in the site address (domain name). Even if you have to set
up several "sister sites" with keyword specific web
addresses that highlight a keyword you care about, you can
always redirect these to your main sites landing page.
You must be sure to have your site indexed or "crawled" by
search engines you care about on a regular basis. This can
happen naturally, or you can make it happen by submitting
your site to the search engines directly. This will cause
them to index your site faster and initially improve your
rating. Because the search engines care about sites that
update their content regularly, and will rank them higher,
be sure not to force this indexing too often. If you do
update your content, it is a good idea to re-submit after
the update and your should see an improvement in your
ranking. Also, if you update regularly, the search engine
will notice this and will normally index your site more
frequently as well. This index frequency is another key
factor in your search ranking, so is a great idea to keep
your site fresh.
Another major factor in search engine rankings is the number
and quality of links that exist for your site. Having a lot
of these links, especially from other sites that are ranked
high is very important. The more links you can establish the
better. There are a few easy ways to get these links created
and most of them are free, but it takes a little effort on
your part. Next to having the perfect website name, getting
a lot of links for your site is the single most important
factor in improving your search rankings.
There are a lot of techniques for getting these links
established for your site and some work better than others.
One easy way is to submit your site to website directories.
These website directories are a sure way to get some links
established, but it can be tricky. Over the years the search
engines have caught onto this technique and if you submit to
too many of these directories too quickly, you could be
penalized, so spread out your submissions. There are a few
of these directories that have been flagged by the search
engines and will actually hurt your ranking, so be sure to
research them all and pick the right ones. Another great
place to get these links started is by visiting and posting
comments on a group of blogs covering the keyword you are
trying to target. Usually if you post on these blogs, you
can add a link back to your site and have it counted in your
favour. You could easily post on several blogs a day and
establish an impressive collection of links as a result.
You could start a blog yourself on the keyword of interest
and pepper this with links back to your site as well. This
would help with your ranking, but could be a little less
effective since all of the links originate from a single
site. It is better to have these links back to your site
start from a lot of different sites. The other advantage to
having a blog is that you can publish articles on it about
your keyword and have your link in these as well. You could
also submit these articles to other blogs or article
directories to expand on the impact of these links.
All of these techniques are fairly easy to implement and
will have a very positive impact on your search rankings
quickly. Some of these are more effective than others and
take a little time to work. The trick with improving your
search engine rankings and traffic is to use a variety of
techniques to help your site rise in the ranking.
Get On The First Page Of Google! |
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