From the very beginning of the Internet, the number one challenge which all of us have faced is how to attract qualified visitors to our websites. Throughout the boom years, one of the most popular solutions was to get massive funding, relatively easy to get in those days, and “buy” traffic, by various means.
As an iconoclastic young developer, with ambitions of beating the “big boys” at their own game, more time than money or the connections to get it, I sought a less capital intensive methodology to achieve the same results. Years of study and rapt attention to the pertinent forums, trying everything that even seemed to make sense (making many mistakes along the way, and learning much from each one), then carefully monitoring the results, has lead to many highly workable tools in our SEO bag of tricks. The outcome of these trial and error methods, (lots of both) lays the foundation of our SEO services and the basis for the ongoing growth of traffic to your website and ours.
The simple fact of the matter is this: Expertise in any other form of writing in no way qualifies one for the type of writing required to optimize a website for the Internet. There are many sites which have less than correct punctuation, grammar, and even spelling which rank #1 in their optimized search phrases. This is not to say that I don’t think these things are important, only that to be found in the search engines, they are not the most important consideration.
The flip side of this argument is equally true. Just because someone knows all the ins and outs of all of the search engines, can write algorithms in their sleep, has lunches with Dr. Eric Schmidt and is on a first name basis with Larry Page and Sergey Brin, does not, in any way, make them a writer. All of the writing on this site was done as a collaborative venture between Susan K. Thompson, a professional writer with strong academic credentials and real world experience, in both business and marketing, and myself. Was there a lot of editing and re-write? Yes. Were there disagreements? You bet! Was it worth it? Look at the record.
Emerald Coast Entrepreneur was launched on May 1, 2005 with most site optimization in place and submission to the directories just beginning. With a total monetary investment of less than $100.00, and a time investment, I’d rather not think about, but which approached 300 hours, the site was given a PR5 ranking by Google on it’s first update, less than 2 months after our launch.
Studies show that over 90% of all online users use search engines to find what they are looking for, whether products/services, or just plain old information.
The following twelve points will, I hope, summarize a philosophy, approach and methodology to the SEO question which is both sound and effective, along with giving some helpful insight into the industry itself.
1. Content. Content. Content.
Effective, professional, optimized Copywriting is the single, most important factor in any SEO campaign. Search engines index websites based on the content found on each page of the site. With a thorough understanding of the language and grammatical conventions combined with intensive research, to find and exploit the market focus, one can move a website to the upper echelon of the “SERP’s” (Search Engine Results Page) in a methodical as well as ethical manner.
2. Analyze Web Logs.
Measure everything, at least twice, and then check again. While I would be the first to say that many of the procedures that make up website optimization are more art than science, one needs to take a very scientific approach to the results of the effort. This is done by methodically keeping a record of, and making an analysis of the sites web logs. There are a number of specialized software which make the job easier but at the bare minimum, one needs to keep a close eye on the site visitors and their activity while on the site. No matter how well planned the strategy, it is largely theoretical until proven by the results, which can only be measured by the logs, and a thorough analysis of their content.
3. No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google, or any other search engine.
Those who promise such feats will either optimize for such vague search term phrases (such as, “green stunted widgets with purple Polka-dots and icing”) that no one will ever likely look for, or they are making a false claim, which they have no intention of keeping, or they have an inside edge at Google, something which they will loose, quickly, when the honest folks at Google find out about it. The other option, that they will take the money and run, is worth mentioning here but I’ll be polite.
4. Some things are just plain silly.
You don’t need to submit your site to 50,000 search engines. Businesses which offer this service are suspect, at best. 85% of the search results on the Internet come from one search engine, which, if you have one link from an established website, or better yet, a directory, will find your site just fine, on it’s own. Four (4) search engines account for over 90% of the traffic on the web. As for any supposed benefit which may accrue from being listed in an obscure search engine in Botswana which specializes in safaris to the Kalahari Desert and receives 7 hits per day; well, you figure it out.
5. SEO is not Pay-per-Click.
While no one would argue the effectiveness of getting increased traffic and sales, through a well planned, pay-per-click campaign, the fact remains that the conversion rates are generally low and they cease the moment the “pay” stops. With a well planned and executed SEO campaign, while results may take a bit longer, they continue to produce, and in fact grow, long after the work is done and paid for. Quite often we have found that after a thorough optimization of a site, only minor adjustments are needed on an ongoing basis, primarily related to new content and/or new items of sale or service.
6. SEO is not witchcraft, Druidism, shamanism.
Neither does it require any special chants, ceremonial fires, or vestments, though some of us do like to howl at the full moon, on occasion. There are no “Top Secret” practices which a reputable SEO can not tell a client, a judge, or his mother, for that matter. The very nature of the Internet has always been cooperative and there is nothing about SEO that can’t be learned, with a heavy dose of time and money. A reputable SEO firm will give you an item per item breakdown of just where the money goes. Be wary if you sense a secretive atmosphere or any unwillingness to answer questions. While there are technical points which might take some background to fully understand, if one has a solid overview of the entire situation, a simple explanation should be easy enough to come up with.
7. Do-it-yourself SEO.
Yes, you can execute your own SEO campaign and find a reputable SEO firm to help plan and organize it for you. About one half of my own clientele do some part of the actual work themselves, or have their in-house dedicated personnel do it, after discussion of the goals and aims of the business/website, a thorough website analysis, comprehensive search phrase research, and focused instruction on the ways and means of achieving high SERPs. These preliminaries are followed up with a detailed program of suggestions and methods which the client can then implement themselves or hire others to perform. Average savings; 30-40%.
8. Phased Implementation.
While many companies spend thousands of dollars per month on Search Engine Optimization, an alternative is available which will pay dividends to you in increased sales and leads without the high initial investment. The most important consideration is to have a reputable firm handle the initial evaluation and suggested optimization planning first. The trial and error method will cost much more, in the long run, with or without the desired result. After studying the plan and establishing a workable budget you may implement the plan as finances allow.
9. Remember the old saying, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
Never was this more true than in the realm of SEO. While concrete and measurable gains will always come from a well thought out and executed optimization strategy, the Internet is a competitive media and we all want to be number one. Accept that a steady upward movement, over time, will place you worlds ahead of a flash followed by a crash.
10. A thought to ponder.
At stake, in the race for the top, is the very existence of your website, your business, and quite possibly your reputation. Beware of any “shortcuts” or less than ethical schemes that anyone might suggest to further your business goals. When it’s all said and done it is you, the business owner, who bears the responsibility for any company or individual you hire. Insist on knowing exactly what the strategy is and what steps are being performed to implement it. If it seems, in the least, suspicious, ask for and get an explanation. In this case, not only is Ignorance not bliss, it could very well be the beginning of the end for your business.
11. All incoming links are not created equal.
Both the relevance to your line of business and website subject matter and the PR value of the incoming link determine how valuable they are to your own PR ranking. With Google starting the trend, nothing new there, and most of the others following close behind, the days of grabbing all the inbound links, in any way possible, are gone. Not only will low ranked and/or irrelevant inbound links not help, they will, in fact, cause a penalty. Link farms, free-for-all link schemes, automated link accumulation software, or any other fad that doesn’t carefully screen the links and websites they are coming from will, in the long run, do more harm than good.
12. It’s more than just facts and figures.
The relationship between an online business and SEO is, perhaps, one of the closest of business relationships. In order to be effective, a SEO must know not only the facts and figures pertaining to the endeavor, but s/he must know something of the dreams and aspirations of the business principals. Things which don’t normally come out in a prospectus are often invaluable information when searching for the “right fit” into the complex world of the Internet. My own clients sometimes ask, due to the frequency of my calls and email in the early phases, “Am I your only client?” I usually laugh and say something to the effect that until I know your business almost as well as you do, yes, you are the only one that counts.
About the author:
James ‘Doc’ Lewis spends much of his professional time as SEO for http://www.emeraldcoastentrepreneur.com/Emerald Coast Entrepreneur. Doc started practicing his magic long before the term SEO was even coined and continues to study and perfect methods of workable and cost effective SEO and SEM, devising unique solutions to diverse marketing challenges.
January 5th,2009
Competitive analysis,
Keywords,
Link Building,
Ranking,
SEO basics,
google | tags:
google,
inbound links,
linking,
seo,
SEO basics |
1 Comment
Recently, most people have noticed significant changes in the SERPs at Google. Web sites that previously held number one positions have dropped to number 899, and some web sites have disappeared off the Google results pages altogether. As is the case with all major Google updates, SEOs have been panicking in forums and there has been much discussion about one topic in particular: reciprocal linking.
The first thing you have to do to understand the direction in which Google is taking with this update, is to get into the minds of the people who run it. Something that is so often overlooked is the fact that Google (and any other search engine) is first and foremost, a business. The reason they offer the service they do, is to make money, to make stocks soar and to keep shareholders happy. Google’s income comes from many sources, but the main one is advertising. In order to be able to sell their advertising real estate for a profitable price, the ad space needs to be seen. In order for the ad space to be seen, many, many, many people must visit the Google web site and use the Google search engine. In order for Google traffic to be at such a level, Google must offer a great, if not the best, search engine service.
So, how does Google offer, or attempt to offer, the absolute best service possible? By having the most relevant, and most useful search results.
Useful and relevant web sites are sites that are extremely visitor-friendly, sites that offer a lot of quality information in many different forms, from RSS feeds, to articles, to forums. Sites that are organized and have developed, naturally, a respect on the internet. A great example of such a site is About.com - search for any topic on About.com and you get a page with a lot of information on that topic and many, many links to other web sites that carry further information. It is, undoubtedly, one of the best places on the Internet to go for information.
Now, here’s where it gets tricky. In the past, Google has evaluated web sites by looking at areas of the site that are easily manipulated by webmasters and SEOs, such as meta tags, alt tags, keyword density, page titles, etc. We all know this has changed. Google has begun to reward sites with a more natural approach to these areas, and to penalize sites that have been over-optimized.
The key now, is visitor-friendly, natural web sites. Google will attract more repeat users, and thus, more advertising capital, if their search results always yield web sites that have the information searchers are looking for and are easy to use and understand.
Natural web sites are web sites who’s page titles reflect the page content in an easily understandable way. They are web sites who’s keywords meta tags contain only the words that apply to the page content. They have description tags that reflect the content in a concise, easily understood way. They have image alt tags that describe the image properly. Most importantly, natural web sites are web sites that develop a natural link popularity. That is to say, they don’t have someone working on finding web sites to swap links with. This is an unnatural linking strategy. A natural linking strategy is to offer a good, resourceful web site and have people link to it of their own accord because it’s such a great resource. Such a strategy also includes linking out to quality web sites that offer further information on your web site’s topic, whether or not they link back to you. This is a huge indicator that the goal of your web site is simply to offer the best information possible to web site visitors.
Cross-promotion will happen naturally as well, and links that are a result of cross-promotion are still considered a natural linking strategy, and as a result, Google or any other search engine cannot not outlaw reciprocal linking all together. But you have to be extremely picky about the sites you decide to engage in cross-promotion with. They must be very relevant and should have a decent presence on Google. Stay away from automated linking programs, link farms and most importantly, exchanging links with excessive amounts of web sites. Your links page should look like an excellent place for your visitors to go should they require further information on the topic your site deals with.
In short, the most important factor contributing to your Google ranking, is visitor-friendliness. Amassing enormous amounts of link exchanges simply does not work anymore. You absolutely must have your web site visitor’s needs foremost in your mind. If you meet those needs, you will be rewarded both in your rankings and in repeat traffic.
About the author:
Courtney Heard is the founder of Abalone Designs - http://www.abalone.ca, a search engine optimization company in Vancouver, Canada. She has been involved in web development and marketing since 1995 and has helped start several businesses since then in the Vancouver area.
So you want to get ahead of the competition on the search engines, and you decide to use a link farm. Stop! There’s danger in link farms as with all SEO methods that seem too good to be true.
Your website shouldn’t link to, or be linked from, websites with any of the characteristics of link farms. Link farms are web sites that have been set up for no reason other than to contain masses of links, exploiting search engines’ link popularity algorithms. They serve no real purpose, other than getting everyone who joins to link to and from them and boosting the rankings of everyone involved. This is a big problem, as most people consider it to be nothing more than search engine ‘spam’.
Do not get link farms confused with directories which are excellent places to get your site listed. The difference here is that a directory attempts to provide its users with a nice organized way to get to the information that they want while a link farm simply posts a ton of links (generally at cost to the linkee) and serves no purpose to anybody on the web.
Avoid all link farms and similar sites! If you try to use one then the end result could be a ranking penalty, or your website might even be banned from the search engine altogether. Being banned from a search engine is a terrible loss for your site and will generally lead you to creating a brand new site out of sheer necessity.
Remember: the number of links to your site isn’t as important as the quality of those links. You’re trying to get people with real, quality sites to link to you. There are even rumors (which are being validated daily) that Google is implementing a quality control algorithm for links which includes the amount of time that a link has existed between two sites as well as the reputations of the two sites based on how many links they send out. For example, if you have a link from a site that only links to three sites all together and this link has stood strong for months, Google will consider it a valuable link. On the other hand, if you get linked to by a site with a massive number of links, Google could care less. Remember, Google is the Santa Claus of the internet, it’s always watching.
Free for All (FFA).
An FFA is a links page where anyone can add a link – quite similar to a link farm. Don’t be fooled into listing your site on these or linking to them. Many programs will submit your link automatically, to hundreds of FFAs all over the web. Don’t use these programs! The search engines will steer clear of your site for a long time if you do.
Who Should I Link To, and How?
Be very selective about your outbound links and your requests for inbound links, and avoid any site that’s anything like a link farm. Look for websites that have similar subjects to yours, good rankings and good traffic. Depending on the topic, they might be hard to find – but then you should find it easier to rank highly in these topics.
Once you’ve found a few good sites, the next step is to email them and request a link. You should, of course, offer one in return. You will run into some opposition with this method and you will sometimes be ignored completely, but you should have a reasonable amount of success. We can’t stress enough, though, that you should be careful about which sites you link to, and check your links regularly.
The Bottom Line.
Link farms are dangerous to your website and a complete waste of time. They can bring your business crashing down by getting you banned from the search engines. You should be concentrating on real marketing methods – even though they’re not a ‘quick fix’, they can work if you give them some time.
There are many real ways to get traffic to your website, and using professional methods can give you a big increase in traffic. Using link farms and FFAs is a good way to get yourself nowhere fast.
December 29th,2008
linking | tags:
link farms,
links |
1 Comment
1. Add every meta tag that you can.
Take a look at the code of a few websites out there. Many sites have silly amounts of tags – far more than they need. Remember the old adage: keep it simple, stupid. Don’t add tags unless you know what you’re doing – and don’t make up your own tag names, because no-one’s paying any attention to them. Most of these tags are skipped over by most search engines anyway. The only crucial tags are the description tag and the keywords tag which are both utilized occasionally. Many other tags are there just for the sake of crediting the webmaster, author, etc. These kinds of tags are there mostly for the sake of other webmasters if they need to know who to contact about the page itself.
#2 Have lots of keywords.
Using the ‘keywords’ meta tag correctly is good, but don’t get too hung up on it. Many search engines now ignore it altogether, including Google and AltaVista. Remember that putting too much in this tag could be considered spamming – make sure you don’t put anything in more than three times, and keep the keywords related to your site. As previously stated, many of your meta tags will be skipped over anyway, but you should keep to your primary key words and not worry too much about assembling a gigantic list. Be descriptive, be honest, don’t be excessive.
#3 Keyword lists must have a formula.
People have a tendency to get very distracted by the keyword meta tag – you shouldn’t misuse it and you definitely shouldn’t expect miracles from it. It gets skipped more often than not; even it’s used it is used in company with the content on your page. If you want to obsess with optimizing something, optimize your content.
#4 The title tag doesn’t really do much.
Out of all the tags, this one is the most important when it’s used correctly. Just like with your site’s content, write your title tag for your audience first and the search engines second. Think about your site’s branding and navigation issues as you create your title tags. Your title should be relatively long. A seven to ten word title is not out of the question. The title is the first thing that a search engine really cares about and it should be the most common thing that you want your visitors to find you for. Your most important key words should all be worked into your title.
#5 If I copy my competitor’s keywords I will do just as well.
You need to understand tags and the details of search engine optimization in general. What works for one site doesn’t necessarily work for another! You do not have identical sites so you cannot work with identical keywords. Aside from this detail, a site that has been around longer is more likely to have success from its key words than a new site. If you are trying to take over a small niche, you have to expand and do something that your competitor hasn’t done yet.
#6 If I repeat my keywords in a comment tag I will rank better.
There was a time long ago when this was true, but it was a really long time ago. Search engines are all wise to this trick nowadays.
#7 We need to have as many different keywords as possible throughout our site
This is an SEO nightmare. Your pages need to be focused, not always trying to cover all basis. Limit your keywords.
#8 Anyone can write a website’s tags.
SEO calls for copywriting and marketing talent: writing good tags that can attract both humans and search engine spiders isn’t easy.
#9 Google doesn’t rank me by the description tag, so why should I use it?
Google does still use the description tag from your site – it displays it to its users in the results. If there’s no description tag, they’ll just see a nonsense excerpt from your site, which is bad. Don’t forget that there are still plenty of uses for the description tag. Make the title and the description complement each other, as they will often be displayed together.
December 28th,2008
Meta tags | tags:
Meta tags |
2 Comments
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Many SEO experts will tell you that they have specific ways of choosing the right keywords for a website. Some do it using SEO tools – software that compares possible keywords to see which are used the most. Some will give you DIY methods with spreadsheets. We say, however, that you should try every method you can in the search for keywords. Here are some steps that might help:
Identify and create a list of keywords from meta tags, research on your competitors, your highest-converting products and biggest current traffic sources. For each term (typically between 30 and 50 terms overall), narrow the field down to about 15 or 20, choosing the terms you feel are most relevant to your website. Your higher ranked competitors are probably up there for a reason so take a look at what they are providing. Make sure that everything is directly relevant and try to stretch yourself out into some unchartered water. The less common that your key words are, the more likely you are to get the search engine results for these key words.
We would recommend a piece of software called WordTracker to find out how many searches have been done on a certain term. You can choose to work with this information however you want – spreadsheets are good, but you can use anything that will make it easy reasonably easy for you to track these keywords. You’re trying to find a popular word that has a low competition rate. Although this is easier said than done, it’s very rewarding to find an area where your site can succeed because of the lack of competition. You should remember, though, that these search databases are relatively small, and should be used for comparing keywords against one another rather than for estimating their true ‘market sizes’.
This keyword selection research should then be compared with client experience of which keywords may be most profitably optimized, as well as any current ranking on the target keywords. Data from PPC campaigns can be helpful for this. The outcome should be a focused list of, say, 15-20 keywords that are both strong performers in terms of search volume, as well as solid candidates for successful optimization.
When determining how profitable your key words are you should look into your web sites statistics and see what key words were used for what number of sales. This is called your conversion rate. The more sales that are associated with a certain key word, the more valuable that key word is. It is important to account for all of the variables, however. If ten people come across your site through a certain key word but only one of them buys an item this key word isn’t as profitable as a key word that one person finds your site through and still orders a product. It is important to work percentages into your decision of worth of a key word. Your “conversion rate” is the number of sales divided by the number of visitors.
You probably know who your competitors are, so go to their site and open the source code of a few of their pages (select ‘View Source’ from your browser’s menu). Look for the <META NAME=”keywords”> tag to see which keywords they’re aiming for. Their keywords are often garbage, but if you look around at a few sites then you can often find keywords you hadn’t thought of. It is not good practice to simply copy and paste a list of key words. It would even be concievable that you would be charged with copyright infringement for such activities. Whether or not you get charged, it is morally wrong. Looking through and coming across a few extra relevant key words is one thing. Steeling an entire list is something else completely.
Another approach is to type in the keywords you have in mind and look at the current top results. Analyze their pages for keywords, descriptions and content – this will give you some idea of what kind of keyword density you should be looking at for your keywords. If the sites that come up are a different kind of business to you altogether then you’ve probably chosen a dodgy keyword – remember that you’re trying to get relevant traffic, not just any traffic.
The general rules that you need to keep in mind when selecting key words are:
1. Try to select unique key words that your competitors have not thought of.
2. Optimize for your most profitable key words. How many sales does the key word generate? How much profit is made for each of these sales?
3. Make sure that the key words are very relevant to your site so that people who find your site through your key words will not immediately leave.
4. Try to assemble a list of key words that covers your site very will so that you aren’t leaving anyone or anything out.
We all want to know how keywords affect our rankings, but to find out we’ll need to do a little work. Many say keywords are the key to good search engine rankings, although they aren’t at all the only factor.
If you need a tool to help you decide on your keywords, try Google’s Keyword Suggestion Tool – it allows you to test your keyword rankings by showing you statistics on recent searches for them. It’s a great tool when you have no clue which keyword you should choose, as it can give you a list of terms that were recently searched on.
Keyword Density
Keyword density refers to the number of the keywords contained within your text relative to the amount of text there is. Preferred keyword density ratios vary between search engines, but you should generally try to keep them between two and eight percent (major search engines prefer the lower end). Keyword analysis tools can help to optimize a web page’s keyword density. These tools are good if you’re not sure of what you’re doing, as they’re very intuitive and explain things as you go.
Counting the Keywords
Many SEO experts will tell you that the keyword density of your text isn’t a very important factor, and that you should be careful not to overdo it. So is there a limit? How many times should you use your keywords? SEO experts won’t be able to answer these questions for you, because no-one’s really sure of the answer. The best answer is that it changes regularly, and you can never be sure – you have to experiment to see what works for you.
Location of Keywords
When testing the effects of keyword location, we found that pages with the keywords at the top and bottom of the page ranked higher on Google than pages with the keywords in the middle.
Many other search engines also give keywords more or less weight based on their location, but keep in mind that each search engine’s algorithm is different. Here’s a list of how most search engines prioritize keyword positions, from most to least:
1. Domain name
2. Page title
3. Headings (i.e. H1, H2, etc.).
4. Body text (the first 2 to 3 KB usually counts more).
5. Meta tags (especially description).
6. Links (including keywords in the URL or link text of links to you).
7. Alt text (the ‘alt’ descriptions for your pictures)
Really, though, keyword density is one of those areas where you’ll have trouble on your hands if you try to second guess the search engines. Be cautious. A really good tool to check keyword density is Internet Business Promoter.
The importance of domain and page naming is obvious, but you might not have realized the connection to SEO. We all know that unless our domain name is highly recognizable and memorable then we won’t get many customers, but good domain names also matter when it comes to search engine rankings – the more relevant your domain is to your keywords, the higher it will be ranked.
Domain names are not that difficult to come by at this point. Godaddy.com puts out some great prices and they run all sorts of specials once you become a customer. The more domains that you buy the more that they like you. The basic concept here is that people who buy a few domain names are probably going to become pretty big on the internet. The more that you own the more powerful you are. Domain names are like land in the early eighteenth century. They are valuable and the owners become a sort of elite class on the internet.
The value of domains is difficult to determine until you have purchased one and worked with it for a while. The difference between owning your own domain name and hosting your site on a sub domain or in a subdirectory of a domain is huge. The impact on your ability to perform SEO operations increases drastically simply by the ease of clarifying your URL for the search engines and directories that you submit to.
There are even directories out there that do not acccept anything except for domains. Domain names are the only way to go if you want to have a seriously successful website that becomes a household name. Directories that do not allow non-domain names are there to protect an investment. If you have spent money on purchasing and hosting a domain name you probably aren’t to excited about seeing sites that haven’t dropped a dime on investment being rated above you. This is a sort of aristocratic mind set, but it is a natural tendency of the mind. There are plenty of directories out there that everybody is able to access, but there are some out there that are only for the elite sites of the internet.
This elitist attitude towards domain names is beneficial to your sites because it allows you to get an edge on other sites simply by buying a domain name. This investment is the most crucial SEO investment that you can make. There are very few sites around that get huge numbers of unique visitors (10,000+ per month) without having their own domain name.
So what do you need to do to get these good rankings? Start off by choosing a domain that matches your website well, and you’re killing two birds with one stone. Your domain name and URL should reflect what you’re trying to accomplish from your site. For example: calling your website ‘thewebcorporation.com’ isn’t much good if it sells offshore companies. For offshore companies, offshore-consultants.com would be a better name. Don’t settle for anything that won’t make people want to come to your site. Using the name of your company for your domain name is also a good way to go. This is the fastest way of providing a good, quality description of what the visitor is going to. Many visitors will actually consider your domain name the name of your company anyway so you might as well name yourself something that you want to be called.
Most webmasters settle for safe, can’t-go-wrong www.myname.com domains, because it takes time to be creative and think up good names that contain your keywords. You might consider getting some help from the people around you, as you never know what they might be thinking that could be great. You need to come up with a few ideas in case some are taken – you’ll be surprised just how many domains have gone.
Everyone always wants a .com, but you shouldn’t rule out .net, .org, .us or a local TLD especially if you are geotargetting. For example, if latinportals.com is taken, you might find that people like latinportals.cr just as much.
Google is still the most popular search engine out there, and they’re not showing any signs of slowing down. It’s important to know how to get on the right track with your SEO for Google. It is also important, however, to remember that Google is not the only search engine out there and that Yahoo! is also a highly rated search engine which actually has more pop culture usage.
Before you can truly understand Google you must understand a little bit of the history behind Google. In the beginning, Google was considered by many to be the “Geek’s Search Engine.” This changed as Google started delivering better and better results. Google slowly evolved into the most trusted search engine around, but Yahoo!’s advertising strength and popular usage has still claimed a large number of users. It wasn’t all that long ago when Yahoo! was the most popular search engine by far.
Google’s search engine is based on PageRank, a complex algorithm that was revolutionary when it was invented. This page rank is the primary reason that Google is so popular. The Page Ranking technology that Google has created and the evolutionary steps that Google has taken to increase the strength of its algorithm has made it a search engine giant which actually sets out to protect internet users from fraudulent web sites. Google has come to be a search engine that cannot really be tricked. It’s kind of the integrity police f the world wide web. Basically, Google checks the number of links to each site in its database, and treats them as ‘votes’. Here are some tips on getting ranked high on Google:
1.The more incoming links you have, the better your chances are. Good links are ones that are relevant to your own page and link with text that makes it obvious that they intended to link to your site. Google has also recently integrated a new piece into its algorithm which makes old links better than new links. In Google’s opinion, if a link withstands the test of time it is has to be relevant or else both parties would have removed the link after not seeing any positive action by Google. Basically, this is another one of Google’s “keeper of integrity” options that have become so famous among SEOs.
2. Links from ‘authority’ sites, such as directories or non-profit organizations, tend to produce better results than links from commercial sites. Google likes to decide what sites are important. A site has some huge credential for being a spectacular source for quality information will be appreciated more than sites that don’t have such strong affiliations with quality work and content. This will result in stronger, more heavily weighted links to and from this site.
3. Site elements to consider for Google are the title (including the strongest keyword phrase), the meta description (Google displays this to its users) and the body text (it needs to be highly-focused and use keywords well), as well as your onsite navigation.
4. Make sure that Google can spider the whole site easily. You’ll probably want to have plain links to every page on your site at the bottom of each of your pages.
Don’t forget, though, that Google is strict about ‘cheaters’ who use unethical SEO techniques. Here are some things that Google hates:
1. Getting lots of ‘shadow domains’ that all point to one site.
2. Using doorway pages.
3. Using falsified WHOIS information.
4. Sites that are “fake” search engines or spyware.
Google Facts and Fiction.
Google has an article on its site called ‘Google Facts and Fiction’. For example:
Fiction: Advertising on Google affects my rankings in the search results.
Fact: Advertising with Google neither helps (nor hurts!) a site’s rankings on Google.
Fiction: Sites that are not HTML are not included in Google’s index
Fact: Google is and does index as many file formats as possible, however there are some that it cannot index. File types Google is able index include: pdf, asp, jsp, hdml, shtml, xml, cfm, doc, xls, ppt, rtf, wks, lwp, wri, swf.
Everyone who wants to optimize for Google should make sure they read this article, to avoid common mistakes.
December 20th,2008
SEO basics,
google | tags:
google,
seo |
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