By - Michael Fleischner
<)))
Although the concept of SEO can be somewhat complex, there are a number of basic search engine optimization practices you should note before starting any SEO related activity. These basic principles are essential for any web page or website for which you are attempting to optimize. Keep in mind that these are just some of the fundamental SEO practices you should consider.
1. MetaTags
Metatags are simple lines of code at the top of your page (source code) that tell the search engines about your page. I recommend that you be sure to include the following meta tags: title (no more than 7 words and unique for each page), keywords, description, author, and robots tag. The robots tag instructs the search engines to read all or some of your website.
2. Create or update your sitemap
Developing a site map is a simple yet highly effective way of giving search engines the information they need to crawl your entire website. This ensures that the engine has an up-to-date record of your pages and content. The key to improving search engine results is making it easy for your website pages to be located and crawled. There is free software on the web (like www.xml-sitemaps.com) that helps you generate a sitemap. Once you create a sitemap for your website, submit to Google and Yahoo. Additionally, place a link to the site map on your home page.
3. Ensure that all navigation is in HTML
Too often I see navigation in the form of java script or images. Even though the navigation technically still works in this format, it’s not optimized. The benefit of creating your navigation in HTML is that you consistently build internal links throughout your website by keeping the navigation constant and easily identified by search engines.
4. Check that all images include ALT text
Your image alt text is spidered by search engines. If you’re not including your keywords in your alt text, your missing out on a huge opportunity for improved search engine result placement. Be sure to label your images appropriately and they may even show up as the number one result on Google. Additionally, Google has a database of images (Google Image Search) that indexes pictures as well.
5. Use Flash content sparingly
As mentioned earlier, content generated through java script or flash is a big no-no. Some webmasters like to use flash because of the presentation. It’s okay to use sparingly, but only after your site has been properly optimized with basic SEO in mind.
6. Make sure that important page elements are HTML
Keep in mind when optimizing a web page crawlers are basically only looking at your source code. Anything you've put together using an image or other multimedia component is likely to be invisible to search engines. Therefore, the most important elements of your page, where the heart of your content is presented, should be presented in W3C optimized HTML source code.
7. Place keywords in your page content the right way
I’m sure you’ve heard the importance of placing the right keywords or keyword phrases in your content. To show the search engines that your article is focused on a particular keyword or keyword phrase, be sure to sprinkle it throughout the content. Additionally, include your keyword in headers and sub-heads. That is to say that your keyword should be contained in an h1, h2, or h3 tag.
Learning to optimize your website for search engines takes time and most of all, patience. Start with the basic principles I’ve outline here and you’re off to a good start. If you’re new to SEO, or even a well seasoned veteran, begin by prioritizing which pages are most important for you to optimize. Sometimes people think that they need to optimize all their pages right away and the task becomes too overwhelming. Start small, begin with your primary and/or secondary pages, and go from there.
About the Author
Michael Fleischner is an Marketing Expert and Search Eninge Optimization Specialist. He has more than 12 years of marketing experience and has appeared on The TODAY Show, Bloomberg Radio, and other major media. Read his blog at http://marketing-expert.blogspot.com.
Showing posts with label search engine optimization. Show all posts
Showing posts with label search engine optimization. Show all posts
Friday, June 22, 2007
Monday, June 11, 2007
Performing Keyword Research Before SEO
By - KC Tan
<)))
Before you start trying to optimize your website, you should need to do a bit of research. This may sounds odd to a lot of web publishers, but before you do anything you need to do some keyword research. There are many different resources that you can go to and all you have to do is type in a subject and you can be given a list of the most commonly searched phrases relating to this topic. Why is this important? The reason is because that when you are optimizing your website you are not just optimizing for the search engine spiders, you are also optimizing for the web surfer that uses the search engines. For instance, if you have a website that is about golf you may find that the typical web surfer does not just type in golf but types in golf club or golf and then the city or state that they are interested in golfing in.
The phrasing is important because you can target your audience by incorporating the most common phrases. You would not want to simply use the keyword “golf” because there are millions of other websites that are also using the term golf and your website will literally get lost in the crowd. Instead, you will want to choose more of the specific keywords that your visitors will be likely to type into the search engine. When you have done this research, you will know which keywords that you should try to focus on and associate with your website.
Keyword research will not take you a lot of time; in fact it can take just minutes to perform. It may take you a bit longer to actually integrate these keywords in healthy amounts into your website. You do not just want to write up a bunch of fluff that will use the keywords as this is not how you can improve your pagerank and be seen. You want to improve your pagerank and then provide consumers with the service, product, or information that they are looking for when they visit your website.
Now you can probably see why many web publishers have a hard time actually optimizing their website! Optimization is something that happens slowly over time. Those that try to rush the process usually end up doing more damage than good, simply creating more work than was necessary. Keyword research is a significant task in order to optimize any site.
About The Author
KC TAN is a SEO consultant with several years of related experiences. He recommends Files Host for uploading and fast file sharing and WeBlogPost for Free Blog Hosting. KC also visits EasyTurnKeySites for Turnkey websites, prebuilt websites.
<)))
Before you start trying to optimize your website, you should need to do a bit of research. This may sounds odd to a lot of web publishers, but before you do anything you need to do some keyword research. There are many different resources that you can go to and all you have to do is type in a subject and you can be given a list of the most commonly searched phrases relating to this topic. Why is this important? The reason is because that when you are optimizing your website you are not just optimizing for the search engine spiders, you are also optimizing for the web surfer that uses the search engines. For instance, if you have a website that is about golf you may find that the typical web surfer does not just type in golf but types in golf club or golf and then the city or state that they are interested in golfing in.
The phrasing is important because you can target your audience by incorporating the most common phrases. You would not want to simply use the keyword “golf” because there are millions of other websites that are also using the term golf and your website will literally get lost in the crowd. Instead, you will want to choose more of the specific keywords that your visitors will be likely to type into the search engine. When you have done this research, you will know which keywords that you should try to focus on and associate with your website.
Keyword research will not take you a lot of time; in fact it can take just minutes to perform. It may take you a bit longer to actually integrate these keywords in healthy amounts into your website. You do not just want to write up a bunch of fluff that will use the keywords as this is not how you can improve your pagerank and be seen. You want to improve your pagerank and then provide consumers with the service, product, or information that they are looking for when they visit your website.
Now you can probably see why many web publishers have a hard time actually optimizing their website! Optimization is something that happens slowly over time. Those that try to rush the process usually end up doing more damage than good, simply creating more work than was necessary. Keyword research is a significant task in order to optimize any site.
About The Author
KC TAN is a SEO consultant with several years of related experiences. He recommends Files Host for uploading and fast file sharing and WeBlogPost for Free Blog Hosting. KC also visits EasyTurnKeySites for Turnkey websites, prebuilt websites.
Collateral Benefits of Search Engine Marketing
By - Paul Bliss
Many times a client only looks at the bottom line when it comes to the performance they are getting for their investment into Search Engine Marketing.
They often only look at the selected keyword phrases that they are paying for, without fully realizing what other residual effects they are receiving.
When a site gets properly optimized, (SEO) it is being transformed into a thought-out navigational pattern to information. This is the same pattern a search engine spider looks for. Don't forget, the easier you make it for a spider to index your site, the better your chances are for getting your site a higher placement in the search engine results page (SERP's).
While W3C validation is something all sites should strive for, it is not required for better rankings. Does it help? Probably. Yahoo engineers have stated that whether a site is W3C compliant or not makes no difference to how it ranks. If it has relevant content, it will get ranked.
Another element when optimizing a site is that through proper naming of page titles, file names and placement of content make the site all the more relevant to the spider. Although Google places less value on Meta Tags, they are still used as part of the algorithm, and should not be overlooked.
After the site has coded properly, the game then goes up to the next level. Search Engine Marketing is used to drive traffic to the site through various means. Press releases, articles, blogs, RSS/XML feeds, Directory Submissions and User Groups all can bring targeted traffic to a site.
Here is where the collateral benefits of SEM begin to appear. Let's say that you have been doing a series of press releases where once a week, you talk about a new color of widget. In each press release you also list the other colors of widgets that you have for sale. Even after only the first release gets sent, you've already created a valuable In-Bound Link to your site for your Red Widget, but since you included the other colors of the widgets as well, they all pick up IBL's as well.
An even greater demonstration of a collateral benefit is ranking for keywords and phrases that you aren't targeting. Keeping to our widget example, if your site copy talks about the different uses of widgets, the available colors that they come in and the best way to preserve your widget, you've just created a multitude of various phrases that your site can get ranked on.
Example site copy:
We sell the highest-quality widget available. Our color selection ranges from red to purple, black to white and can be used in your home or for industrial needs. The widget is the most versatile tool on the market. Pick one up today!
From this one paragraph, here are the possible phrases your site could get ranked on:
high quality widget
red widget
purple widget
black widget
white widget
home widget
industrial widget
widget tool
widget
This is only a tiny sampling of the potential your site has. Remember, each page gets ranked on it's own, so that's why it is so important to make sure every page you have on your site is optimized.
Even your contact/about page is critical because if you have a brick-and-mortar business, by listing your street address, you help the search engines geo target your site. Most search engines are already trying to focus your search results regionally. While it's not a major factor yet, it is something to be aware of.
In conclusion, the next time you start checking Google to see where your site ranks for it's keyword phrases, don't forget about all of the hidden keywords/phrases that are embedded in your site's copy. You would be surprised at how many of those forgotten about terms end up at the top of the pile....
-To your online success!
About The Author
Paul Bliss
www.SEOforGoogle.com
Many times a client only looks at the bottom line when it comes to the performance they are getting for their investment into Search Engine Marketing.
They often only look at the selected keyword phrases that they are paying for, without fully realizing what other residual effects they are receiving.
When a site gets properly optimized, (SEO) it is being transformed into a thought-out navigational pattern to information. This is the same pattern a search engine spider looks for. Don't forget, the easier you make it for a spider to index your site, the better your chances are for getting your site a higher placement in the search engine results page (SERP's).
While W3C validation is something all sites should strive for, it is not required for better rankings. Does it help? Probably. Yahoo engineers have stated that whether a site is W3C compliant or not makes no difference to how it ranks. If it has relevant content, it will get ranked.
Another element when optimizing a site is that through proper naming of page titles, file names and placement of content make the site all the more relevant to the spider. Although Google places less value on Meta Tags, they are still used as part of the algorithm, and should not be overlooked.
After the site has coded properly, the game then goes up to the next level. Search Engine Marketing is used to drive traffic to the site through various means. Press releases, articles, blogs, RSS/XML feeds, Directory Submissions and User Groups all can bring targeted traffic to a site.
Here is where the collateral benefits of SEM begin to appear. Let's say that you have been doing a series of press releases where once a week, you talk about a new color of widget. In each press release you also list the other colors of widgets that you have for sale. Even after only the first release gets sent, you've already created a valuable In-Bound Link to your site for your Red Widget, but since you included the other colors of the widgets as well, they all pick up IBL's as well.
An even greater demonstration of a collateral benefit is ranking for keywords and phrases that you aren't targeting. Keeping to our widget example, if your site copy talks about the different uses of widgets, the available colors that they come in and the best way to preserve your widget, you've just created a multitude of various phrases that your site can get ranked on.
Example site copy:
We sell the highest-quality widget available. Our color selection ranges from red to purple, black to white and can be used in your home or for industrial needs. The widget is the most versatile tool on the market. Pick one up today!
From this one paragraph, here are the possible phrases your site could get ranked on:
high quality widget
red widget
purple widget
black widget
white widget
home widget
industrial widget
widget tool
widget
This is only a tiny sampling of the potential your site has. Remember, each page gets ranked on it's own, so that's why it is so important to make sure every page you have on your site is optimized.
Even your contact/about page is critical because if you have a brick-and-mortar business, by listing your street address, you help the search engines geo target your site. Most search engines are already trying to focus your search results regionally. While it's not a major factor yet, it is something to be aware of.
In conclusion, the next time you start checking Google to see where your site ranks for it's keyword phrases, don't forget about all of the hidden keywords/phrases that are embedded in your site's copy. You would be surprised at how many of those forgotten about terms end up at the top of the pile....
-To your online success!
About The Author
Paul Bliss
www.SEOforGoogle.com
Saturday, June 9, 2007
Internet Marketing Basics From The SEO Expert
By - P Laboon
<)))
The first place to start is with keyword phrase research before you publish your website. Think about researching for the keywords which are best suited to your website. Keywords are the words that the visitors input into the search engines in order to find the information they are looking for. You must try to find out a keyword phrase that has good search volume and at the same time that has least competition. There are online tools available such as http://inventory.overture.com which will help you find effective keywords.
Once you have chosen the keywords and created the website, you can now publish it. After publishing the website, there are few more steps that you need to pursue in order to improve the visibility of your website in all the major search engines such as Google, MSN, Yahoo, etc...
You should try to use your keywords several times on each page, this is called keyword density. This is the best way to show search engines that your webpage should be in the search results for that specific keyword phrase.
Next, you should now consider adding a HTML Sitemap as well as XML Sitemap. A sitemap helps your visitors to get an idea about the structure of your website as well as it provides search engine spiders a pathway to all the inner relevant web pages of the website to get indexed. The sitemap also provides information to search engine spiders about new content and date of the modification to the webpage. A sitemap can be integrated in two versions, the HTML version for the visitors, and the XML version for the search engine spider.
Once you have uploaded the sitemaps, you should check your website against valid HTML and CSS. Validation is very important for a quality website that wants to rank fr the long haul.
Once your site is up and running, apart from updating new content frequently (at least 3 times a week), it’s important to check for dead or broken links. If you find a dead or broken link, remove those links immediately or correct the file path. These links will reduce the credibility of your website to visitors and search engines.
You will also want to check for backlinks. Backlinks are incoming links to a website or web page. The number of backlinks is a sign of the popularity or importance of that website or page. Backlinks are also called as incoming links, inbound links, inlinks, and inward links. Search engines frequently use the number of backlinks that a website has as one of the factors for determining that website's search engine ranking.
One of the advantages of internet marketing is that it is very easy to test your marketing results. This is very essential – you should use tracking software to keep track of which ads, keywords, etc are bringing you sales and traffic. We recommend using Google Analytics because it gives quality feedback and is free to use.
Remember, focus on the most effective methods, and keep testing – you can continually refine your marketing and improve your presence on the internet.A website which is carefully created with chosen keywords, pertinent original content which is updated often has a chance to perform well in major search engines while generating high traffic.
About The Author
Phil Laboon is an internet marketing expert that is the owner /creator of Eyeflow- a well known Pittsburgh SEO company. Phil is continually offering free advice to anyone who wants to learn and has had hundreds of free education articles published on the internet over the last 6 years he’s been in business. For more information on Phil Laboon, search engine optimization, or web design just click the links in this bio.
<)))
The first place to start is with keyword phrase research before you publish your website. Think about researching for the keywords which are best suited to your website. Keywords are the words that the visitors input into the search engines in order to find the information they are looking for. You must try to find out a keyword phrase that has good search volume and at the same time that has least competition. There are online tools available such as http://inventory.overture.com which will help you find effective keywords.
Once you have chosen the keywords and created the website, you can now publish it. After publishing the website, there are few more steps that you need to pursue in order to improve the visibility of your website in all the major search engines such as Google, MSN, Yahoo, etc...
You should try to use your keywords several times on each page, this is called keyword density. This is the best way to show search engines that your webpage should be in the search results for that specific keyword phrase.
Next, you should now consider adding a HTML Sitemap as well as XML Sitemap. A sitemap helps your visitors to get an idea about the structure of your website as well as it provides search engine spiders a pathway to all the inner relevant web pages of the website to get indexed. The sitemap also provides information to search engine spiders about new content and date of the modification to the webpage. A sitemap can be integrated in two versions, the HTML version for the visitors, and the XML version for the search engine spider.
Once you have uploaded the sitemaps, you should check your website against valid HTML and CSS. Validation is very important for a quality website that wants to rank fr the long haul.
Once your site is up and running, apart from updating new content frequently (at least 3 times a week), it’s important to check for dead or broken links. If you find a dead or broken link, remove those links immediately or correct the file path. These links will reduce the credibility of your website to visitors and search engines.
You will also want to check for backlinks. Backlinks are incoming links to a website or web page. The number of backlinks is a sign of the popularity or importance of that website or page. Backlinks are also called as incoming links, inbound links, inlinks, and inward links. Search engines frequently use the number of backlinks that a website has as one of the factors for determining that website's search engine ranking.
One of the advantages of internet marketing is that it is very easy to test your marketing results. This is very essential – you should use tracking software to keep track of which ads, keywords, etc are bringing you sales and traffic. We recommend using Google Analytics because it gives quality feedback and is free to use.
Remember, focus on the most effective methods, and keep testing – you can continually refine your marketing and improve your presence on the internet.A website which is carefully created with chosen keywords, pertinent original content which is updated often has a chance to perform well in major search engines while generating high traffic.
About The Author
Phil Laboon is an internet marketing expert that is the owner /creator of Eyeflow- a well known Pittsburgh SEO company. Phil is continually offering free advice to anyone who wants to learn and has had hundreds of free education articles published on the internet over the last 6 years he’s been in business. For more information on Phil Laboon, search engine optimization, or web design just click the links in this bio.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Search Engine Optimization & Visitors - The One Thing You Can't Forget
By - Cathie Streck
<)))
You've built a website or a blog and worked hard to create a web presence. You've probably worked hard to optimize your site so that the search engines reward your efforts with good placement and traffic. Job complete? Not if you haven't thought about your visitors.
We've all heard "content is king" and about the importance of search engine optimization but what some people don't realize is that your visitor, or traffic, is actually king. Content is Queen for sure and SEO is the redheaded step-child that is constantly changing, evolving and annoying us. They should all work hand-in-hand for the benefit of the kingdom, your web site or blog.
The importance of the experience your visitors have on your site is often overlooked. With so much emphasis on search engine optimization, it's easy to forget that it's people that visit your site, bookmark it, Digg it and recommend it to their friends and family. It's your visitors that return to your site and make you money. Sure, the search engines send those people to you but if they don't want to stay, return, bookmark or recommend your site to a friend it's kind of meaningless. Those visitors are like a mother-in-law that only finds fault in how you keep your house and raise your children. Sometimes mother-in-laws are right. It's best to optimise your site for your visitors as well as the search engines. Make your visitors comfortable, clean the house before they come and make it a pleasant stay. They'll want to come back.
When people say "traffic" or "heavy traffic" in the non-cyber world it's usually considered an annoyance or hindrance and has a negative connotation. It's a bad thing. In the cyber world, heavy traffic is a good thing, something you look forward to, something you invite with open arms. But when you consider the people visiting your website "traffic" it becomes very impersonal. That's why I have always preferred to refer to the people that visit my sites as visitors, not traffic. It's more personal and keeps me on track where it concerns my site's friendliness to my visitors. It never lets me forget to optimize my site for my visitors.
In the cyber world, being hospitable to your visitors means quality content, quality link structure, continuity and eye appeal. We've all seen ad riddled web sites, sites that are disorganized and sites with poor link structure. The kind of sites that get you clicking the back button in your browser before the page even finishes loading the second image. When that happens did that site receive traffic? Yes, but the way I look at it, it didn't receive a visitor.
Page Structure
Your page's structure, how the page is laid out, is very important. I have always preferred an image or text title in the header, a side bar for links on the left hand side of the page, content in the center and site navigation repeated in the footer for convenience. Maybe it's because that's how web pages were generally structured years ago and I got used to it, I don't know, but it's the way I prefer to read a web page. It's a structure I'm comfortable with and I immediately know, without much or any thought, how to navigate the site. It's like reading a book. First you look down the page and then from left to right. Most visitors will do the same. Title, navigation and then content. It's a winning page layout in my opinion.
Navigation on the right side seem awkward to me and too much linkage in the header just pushes the content, the meat of the page, down.
Link Structure
This can be a determining factor when deciding whether or not I like a site. Link structure allows your visitor to become comfortable while navigating your site. I can't tell you how many times I've left a site because navigating it was either difficult or annoying. Along with layout it's the skeleton of your web site and what keeps it from collapsing. It's your site's foundation and getting it right the first time can save you headaches later on.
A simple example of bad link structure would be no link back to the homepage or a link back to the homepage that's not easily located. I've always made the link back to my index page the first link in my site navigation and it should be repeated on every page of your site. You should be able to navigate to any page on you site from any other page. It's a good, basic rule that works well.
Continuity
Your site's link structure, page structure and look (theme) should also have good continuity. I think that is why it has become so popular. Besides allowing webmasters to make changes easily and saving them time, it also makes changes to site navigation and structure easier to implement site-wide, eliminating most, if not all continuity mistakes.
In closing I just want to say that search engine optimization is very important so that you get visitors but optimizing your site for your visitors will get them to return and refer your site. Free visitors, does any webmaster have a problem with that? I don't think so.
Good luck to you all!
About The Author
By - Cathie Streck Please be sure to visit Anfe - Articles and News For Entrepreneurs at http://moneymymoney.blogspot.com/ for articles and news on search engine optimization, affiliate programs, home based business, AdSense, AdWords, eBay and much more. Feel free to re-publish this article as long as the "About The Author" information is included and the links work. Thank you.
<)))
You've built a website or a blog and worked hard to create a web presence. You've probably worked hard to optimize your site so that the search engines reward your efforts with good placement and traffic. Job complete? Not if you haven't thought about your visitors.
We've all heard "content is king" and about the importance of search engine optimization but what some people don't realize is that your visitor, or traffic, is actually king. Content is Queen for sure and SEO is the redheaded step-child that is constantly changing, evolving and annoying us. They should all work hand-in-hand for the benefit of the kingdom, your web site or blog.
The importance of the experience your visitors have on your site is often overlooked. With so much emphasis on search engine optimization, it's easy to forget that it's people that visit your site, bookmark it, Digg it and recommend it to their friends and family. It's your visitors that return to your site and make you money. Sure, the search engines send those people to you but if they don't want to stay, return, bookmark or recommend your site to a friend it's kind of meaningless. Those visitors are like a mother-in-law that only finds fault in how you keep your house and raise your children. Sometimes mother-in-laws are right. It's best to optimise your site for your visitors as well as the search engines. Make your visitors comfortable, clean the house before they come and make it a pleasant stay. They'll want to come back.
When people say "traffic" or "heavy traffic" in the non-cyber world it's usually considered an annoyance or hindrance and has a negative connotation. It's a bad thing. In the cyber world, heavy traffic is a good thing, something you look forward to, something you invite with open arms. But when you consider the people visiting your website "traffic" it becomes very impersonal. That's why I have always preferred to refer to the people that visit my sites as visitors, not traffic. It's more personal and keeps me on track where it concerns my site's friendliness to my visitors. It never lets me forget to optimize my site for my visitors.
In the cyber world, being hospitable to your visitors means quality content, quality link structure, continuity and eye appeal. We've all seen ad riddled web sites, sites that are disorganized and sites with poor link structure. The kind of sites that get you clicking the back button in your browser before the page even finishes loading the second image. When that happens did that site receive traffic? Yes, but the way I look at it, it didn't receive a visitor.
Page Structure
Your page's structure, how the page is laid out, is very important. I have always preferred an image or text title in the header, a side bar for links on the left hand side of the page, content in the center and site navigation repeated in the footer for convenience. Maybe it's because that's how web pages were generally structured years ago and I got used to it, I don't know, but it's the way I prefer to read a web page. It's a structure I'm comfortable with and I immediately know, without much or any thought, how to navigate the site. It's like reading a book. First you look down the page and then from left to right. Most visitors will do the same. Title, navigation and then content. It's a winning page layout in my opinion.
Navigation on the right side seem awkward to me and too much linkage in the header just pushes the content, the meat of the page, down.
Link Structure
This can be a determining factor when deciding whether or not I like a site. Link structure allows your visitor to become comfortable while navigating your site. I can't tell you how many times I've left a site because navigating it was either difficult or annoying. Along with layout it's the skeleton of your web site and what keeps it from collapsing. It's your site's foundation and getting it right the first time can save you headaches later on.
A simple example of bad link structure would be no link back to the homepage or a link back to the homepage that's not easily located. I've always made the link back to my index page the first link in my site navigation and it should be repeated on every page of your site. You should be able to navigate to any page on you site from any other page. It's a good, basic rule that works well.
Continuity
Your site's link structure, page structure and look (theme) should also have good continuity. I think that is why it has become so popular. Besides allowing webmasters to make changes easily and saving them time, it also makes changes to site navigation and structure easier to implement site-wide, eliminating most, if not all continuity mistakes.
In closing I just want to say that search engine optimization is very important so that you get visitors but optimizing your site for your visitors will get them to return and refer your site. Free visitors, does any webmaster have a problem with that? I don't think so.
Good luck to you all!
About The Author
By - Cathie Streck Please be sure to visit Anfe - Articles and News For Entrepreneurs at http://moneymymoney.blogspot.com/ for articles and news on search engine optimization, affiliate programs, home based business, AdSense, AdWords, eBay and much more. Feel free to re-publish this article as long as the "About The Author" information is included and the links work. Thank you.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Blogging for SEO
By - Paul Bliss
Using frequent posts to drive the search engines to your site.
It's no secret that blogs are great for helping to boost your seo rankings. You can use a blog to get a new site ranked quickly and ahead of your main site if you are dedicated to posting on a frequent basis.
While the main goal of your blog may be to express your thoughts, talk back to your customers or as a vehicle to promote your product or services, there is another critical element to blogging.
Search Engine Optimization & Marketing.
Because of the frequency of active blogs (daily - or at least 5 times a week) the search engines have put high weight on blogs that are focused and tend to stay on topic.
It's the freshness of content (in a perfect world) that a search engine is craving and rewarding to the blogs. The ideal situation is that the blog would provide for tiny snippets of information that over time build up to a greater whole. (Almost like a blook)
But the most overloooked element of a blog is that once you've established a frequent pattern of posting and you have the Googlebot coming to your site every few days, you can then use that to link to other sites, sub-domains or any deep links that you need to get crawled. While most blog postings may not have direct links to any sites in particular, you could always format your blog with some permanent links on the side.
Another mistake made by the amatuer blogger is that they don't realize that you can optimize your blog. True, most blogs only have a few areas, namely the "home" page and the "archive" page. But depending on the tool being used to post the blog, there are some places where you can take advantage seo-wise.
The title of your blog should be thought of as a headline - grab the reader's attention - but also be sure that your blog title is also what gets archived - that way your titles can become search queries as well.
While the main objective of a blog should be to get your message out, don't forget to take a little time for SEO and you should see your efforts payoff in the search engine results pages.
-To your online success!
About The Author
Paul Bliss
www.SEOforGoogle.com
Using frequent posts to drive the search engines to your site.
It's no secret that blogs are great for helping to boost your seo rankings. You can use a blog to get a new site ranked quickly and ahead of your main site if you are dedicated to posting on a frequent basis.
While the main goal of your blog may be to express your thoughts, talk back to your customers or as a vehicle to promote your product or services, there is another critical element to blogging.
Search Engine Optimization & Marketing.
Because of the frequency of active blogs (daily - or at least 5 times a week) the search engines have put high weight on blogs that are focused and tend to stay on topic.
It's the freshness of content (in a perfect world) that a search engine is craving and rewarding to the blogs. The ideal situation is that the blog would provide for tiny snippets of information that over time build up to a greater whole. (Almost like a blook)
But the most overloooked element of a blog is that once you've established a frequent pattern of posting and you have the Googlebot coming to your site every few days, you can then use that to link to other sites, sub-domains or any deep links that you need to get crawled. While most blog postings may not have direct links to any sites in particular, you could always format your blog with some permanent links on the side.
Another mistake made by the amatuer blogger is that they don't realize that you can optimize your blog. True, most blogs only have a few areas, namely the "home" page and the "archive" page. But depending on the tool being used to post the blog, there are some places where you can take advantage seo-wise.
The title of your blog should be thought of as a headline - grab the reader's attention - but also be sure that your blog title is also what gets archived - that way your titles can become search queries as well.
While the main objective of a blog should be to get your message out, don't forget to take a little time for SEO and you should see your efforts payoff in the search engine results pages.
-To your online success!
About The Author
Paul Bliss
www.SEOforGoogle.com
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Deep Linking Strategy for Content Sites
By - Jack Humphrey
<)))
Linking - what a mess if you don't know what's going on. Either linking is "IN" or it's "OUT" according to what you read these days.
Here's the good news: Linking Works.
Here's the bad news: HOW It Works Has Changed!
The good thing is you are going to pick up a linking tip today that will put you light years ahead of most webmasters who think a reciprocal link directory is all you need to gain link popularity in Google and traffic from other sites.
Link directories are still ok, but the key is moderation. Directories with thousands of links are a dark ages website promotion tactic.
Today there are many people focusing on content again, thank god. And that means you have a lot more real estate than just a home page and a link directory to work with.
People have written to me to completely disagree with me on what I am about to show you, but believe the expert, it works!
Say you have 500 pages of article and resource content on your site. If you are publishing articles on several categories you could have many more pages than that.
But even if you only have a 30 page site right now, it should be growing all the time and will be large eventually. (If not, forget about Google staying excited about your site if it never changes.)
Each of those articles and resource pages is a link to your site waiting to happen.
There are two ways to get links to your site here:
Ask for a link to your main page in exchange for a link on one of your relevant article pages to the site you are requesting an exchange with.
Deep Linking: Ask for a link right back to the specific page on your site you are going to link to them on. Again, find relevant pages of content to the sites you are going after. People respond well to this, especially if you say you are limiting your outgoing links to "further resources" to 5 per page. (The number is up to you.)
What does this do for your site?
1. It gets webmasters WAY more excited about linking with you because you are putting them ON your site, not in some cobweb-ridden part of your site that no one ever visits.
2. It lets other site owners know you have ACTUALLY taken the time to review their site enough to know where they would best fit on your site according to the topic of the page you want to link to them on. Again - this is a way different message to them than the "Let's swap links" letter we all trash these days.
3. You start building link popularity and traffic direct to pages within your site other than your index. (If you choose to direct swap with them.)
4. It gives you leverage to ask for a better link from other sites than just being thrown in their link dump (link directory) where, again, far fewer people ever visit. You command the power to ask for a similar link of importance from the pages their visitors actually see. Win-Win
5. You increase the value of your links page because you are not loading it down with any and every person who will link with you. You can go back to old school linking to sites that you HONESTLY do recommend and that list can be far smaller and really fit on 1-2 pages. All the sudden you have traffic to your links page again and can truly reward webmasters who are on it with some traffic.
6. The links you get this way are going to be some of the first links you have probably ever gotten that actually send you significant traffic. The same goes for your link partners.
"But Jack, I don't want to send traffic away from my site!" Yes you do, in fact. Because you are asking your link partners to do the same. Links like this are just as profitable in the long run as Google Adsense ads because you are finally engaging in a real traffic exchange and leveraging your eproperty for what it's really worth. Trust me - this works. Send some traffic out and see what happens to your referrer stats.
Never give more than you get. Many people won't understand this form of linking for another year or so. They will try to shove your link in a dark hole on their site. Don't let them do it!
If someone doesn't understand the power of deep linking from their content pages, send them this article as a last ditch effort and tell them Jack said so. Otherwise, move on, take their link down, and find someone smart enough to see where linking is headed.
Overall, you are going to find it is much easier to get links this way, even from sites bigger than yours. Telling people "I want to link to you as a recommended resource on (name of article) page..." tells them that you are a pro and not some schmuck who has a linking program that spits out cookie cutter emails.
Too much work? Hire someone and pay them per link they secure in your name. Write the letter and have them fill in the blanks for specific sites. Teach them how to go through your site, learn the content, and go out and find RELEVANT recommended resources for each page.
You'd be surprised to find out how cheaply you can get good work done these days on Elance.com and other "for hire" sites.
Sit back and watch your incoming QUALITY links soar from month to month!
About The Author
Jack Humphrey is the author of Power Linking 2: Evolution at http://power-linking-profits.com> and marketing consultant for http://webfoxmedia.com.
<)))
Linking - what a mess if you don't know what's going on. Either linking is "IN" or it's "OUT" according to what you read these days.
Here's the good news: Linking Works.
Here's the bad news: HOW It Works Has Changed!
The good thing is you are going to pick up a linking tip today that will put you light years ahead of most webmasters who think a reciprocal link directory is all you need to gain link popularity in Google and traffic from other sites.
Link directories are still ok, but the key is moderation. Directories with thousands of links are a dark ages website promotion tactic.
Today there are many people focusing on content again, thank god. And that means you have a lot more real estate than just a home page and a link directory to work with.
People have written to me to completely disagree with me on what I am about to show you, but believe the expert, it works!
Say you have 500 pages of article and resource content on your site. If you are publishing articles on several categories you could have many more pages than that.
But even if you only have a 30 page site right now, it should be growing all the time and will be large eventually. (If not, forget about Google staying excited about your site if it never changes.)
Each of those articles and resource pages is a link to your site waiting to happen.
There are two ways to get links to your site here:
Ask for a link to your main page in exchange for a link on one of your relevant article pages to the site you are requesting an exchange with.
Deep Linking: Ask for a link right back to the specific page on your site you are going to link to them on. Again, find relevant pages of content to the sites you are going after. People respond well to this, especially if you say you are limiting your outgoing links to "further resources" to 5 per page. (The number is up to you.)
What does this do for your site?
1. It gets webmasters WAY more excited about linking with you because you are putting them ON your site, not in some cobweb-ridden part of your site that no one ever visits.
2. It lets other site owners know you have ACTUALLY taken the time to review their site enough to know where they would best fit on your site according to the topic of the page you want to link to them on. Again - this is a way different message to them than the "Let's swap links" letter we all trash these days.
3. You start building link popularity and traffic direct to pages within your site other than your index. (If you choose to direct swap with them.)
4. It gives you leverage to ask for a better link from other sites than just being thrown in their link dump (link directory) where, again, far fewer people ever visit. You command the power to ask for a similar link of importance from the pages their visitors actually see. Win-Win
5. You increase the value of your links page because you are not loading it down with any and every person who will link with you. You can go back to old school linking to sites that you HONESTLY do recommend and that list can be far smaller and really fit on 1-2 pages. All the sudden you have traffic to your links page again and can truly reward webmasters who are on it with some traffic.
6. The links you get this way are going to be some of the first links you have probably ever gotten that actually send you significant traffic. The same goes for your link partners.
"But Jack, I don't want to send traffic away from my site!" Yes you do, in fact. Because you are asking your link partners to do the same. Links like this are just as profitable in the long run as Google Adsense ads because you are finally engaging in a real traffic exchange and leveraging your eproperty for what it's really worth. Trust me - this works. Send some traffic out and see what happens to your referrer stats.
Never give more than you get. Many people won't understand this form of linking for another year or so. They will try to shove your link in a dark hole on their site. Don't let them do it!
If someone doesn't understand the power of deep linking from their content pages, send them this article as a last ditch effort and tell them Jack said so. Otherwise, move on, take their link down, and find someone smart enough to see where linking is headed.
Overall, you are going to find it is much easier to get links this way, even from sites bigger than yours. Telling people "I want to link to you as a recommended resource on (name of article) page..." tells them that you are a pro and not some schmuck who has a linking program that spits out cookie cutter emails.
Too much work? Hire someone and pay them per link they secure in your name. Write the letter and have them fill in the blanks for specific sites. Teach them how to go through your site, learn the content, and go out and find RELEVANT recommended resources for each page.
You'd be surprised to find out how cheaply you can get good work done these days on Elance.com and other "for hire" sites.
Sit back and watch your incoming QUALITY links soar from month to month!
About The Author
Jack Humphrey is the author of Power Linking 2: Evolution at http://power-linking-profits.com> and marketing consultant for http://webfoxmedia.com.
SEO for Digg
By - Paul Bliss
<)))
In case you haven't been on the Internet for the past year or so, there has been a tremendous amount of attention being captured by socially-powered sites such as digg.
So, what does this have to with the world of Search Engine Marketing?
There is something called the Digg effect, which essentially brings a ton of traffic to your site in a small amount of time. (Usually within minutes of a posting).
While digg readers despise seo-planted stories, if you do have something topical or free to use or even something that's just "cool", you won't feel the wrath of the digg community, and end up with your post getting buried.
So how can you leverage this site?
One of the key elements of getting a story on the home page is to have either a ton of people who have "dugg" your posting, or if you happen to know some of the top users on digg to vote for your story, you'll have no time reaching the front.
For the rest of us, we need to work harder. While there are sites that sell services to "digg" stories for you, at some point in time, digg will wise up and stop that.
There is another site that allows you to alert any of your friends when you have posted on digg, called Digg Alerts.
But despite all the "gaming" that goes on, at the end of the day, you need to have a compelling story to have the readers interact with what you're saying.
As for the SEO coding and copy writing element of digg, you need to have a great title and summary to get any reader to even bother checking out your site. Another course of action you need to take is to review all of digg's categories - if your story would not fit on the site, don't waste your time.
The expectation set forth when using digg in as part of your marketing strategy should be to create buzz, build brand name and drive traffic to your site. To expect digg users to click on your Adsense ads is non-sensical - digg readers are tech-savvy and can smell that technique a mile away. Be patient, post often and become part of the digg community by also submitting great stories you find - often times it will already be posted, but every once in a while you can beat them to the punch, and you gain a little bit of credibility on the site.
-To your online success!
About The Author
Paul Bliss
www.SEOforGoogle.com
<)))
In case you haven't been on the Internet for the past year or so, there has been a tremendous amount of attention being captured by socially-powered sites such as digg.
So, what does this have to with the world of Search Engine Marketing?
There is something called the Digg effect, which essentially brings a ton of traffic to your site in a small amount of time. (Usually within minutes of a posting).
While digg readers despise seo-planted stories, if you do have something topical or free to use or even something that's just "cool", you won't feel the wrath of the digg community, and end up with your post getting buried.
So how can you leverage this site?
One of the key elements of getting a story on the home page is to have either a ton of people who have "dugg" your posting, or if you happen to know some of the top users on digg to vote for your story, you'll have no time reaching the front.
For the rest of us, we need to work harder. While there are sites that sell services to "digg" stories for you, at some point in time, digg will wise up and stop that.
There is another site that allows you to alert any of your friends when you have posted on digg, called Digg Alerts.
But despite all the "gaming" that goes on, at the end of the day, you need to have a compelling story to have the readers interact with what you're saying.
As for the SEO coding and copy writing element of digg, you need to have a great title and summary to get any reader to even bother checking out your site. Another course of action you need to take is to review all of digg's categories - if your story would not fit on the site, don't waste your time.
The expectation set forth when using digg in as part of your marketing strategy should be to create buzz, build brand name and drive traffic to your site. To expect digg users to click on your Adsense ads is non-sensical - digg readers are tech-savvy and can smell that technique a mile away. Be patient, post often and become part of the digg community by also submitting great stories you find - often times it will already be posted, but every once in a while you can beat them to the punch, and you gain a little bit of credibility on the site.
-To your online success!
About The Author
Paul Bliss
www.SEOforGoogle.com
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Google TrustRank
By - Paul Bliss
<)))
There has been an ever increasing awareness to the value of Google's "TrustRank" algorithm. While there are many factors that are "Off-page", there are a number of simple actions you can take to make sure your site earns the trust from Google by employing these easy techniques.
The best way to think about Trustrank is to compare it to if you were to purchase a product or service in the real world. There are many built-in factors that we use to pre-qualify a business to see if we are willing to part with our cash for their goods or services. This is the same approach Google takes in order to measure the quality of a site, and doing this will get you out of the so-called "Sandbox" much faster than the typical 4-6 months.
While in no particular order, some are most costly than others, but all are worth doing.
Register your domain for 10 years. If you can't afford the $70 it costs at GoDaddy then are you really serious about your site?
Buy a SSL certificate - this tells Google that you are a legit business since they know you have to have a verified checking account to get a SSL cert. (And buy it for as many years as you can at a time, at the very least for 2 years)
Have a privacy policy that tells in exact detail what happens to the information about the visitor that is collected from the site.
List a mailing address (no P.O. Boxes) - Just as in real life, you feel better purchasing a service or product from a place that has a physical location.
List your contact information - telephone, fax (if needed), email & name.
If you have a bigger budget, use any of the "Hacker Safe" services and place those icons on your site. Again, this tells Google that you are seriously committed to protecting your visitor's experience on the site.
Those are simple techniques that you can directly apply to your site, and are signals to Google that you take your online presence seriously.
As far as the "Off-page" factors, it's really about linking to quality sites that are relevant and sometimes considered "authority sites" by Google. Also, getting links from those trusted sites will help re-enforce the quality of your site in the eyes of the Google spiders.
-To your online success!
About The Author
Paul Bliss
www.seoforgoogle.com
<)))
There has been an ever increasing awareness to the value of Google's "TrustRank" algorithm. While there are many factors that are "Off-page", there are a number of simple actions you can take to make sure your site earns the trust from Google by employing these easy techniques.
The best way to think about Trustrank is to compare it to if you were to purchase a product or service in the real world. There are many built-in factors that we use to pre-qualify a business to see if we are willing to part with our cash for their goods or services. This is the same approach Google takes in order to measure the quality of a site, and doing this will get you out of the so-called "Sandbox" much faster than the typical 4-6 months.
While in no particular order, some are most costly than others, but all are worth doing.
Register your domain for 10 years. If you can't afford the $70 it costs at GoDaddy then are you really serious about your site?
Buy a SSL certificate - this tells Google that you are a legit business since they know you have to have a verified checking account to get a SSL cert. (And buy it for as many years as you can at a time, at the very least for 2 years)
Have a privacy policy that tells in exact detail what happens to the information about the visitor that is collected from the site.
List a mailing address (no P.O. Boxes) - Just as in real life, you feel better purchasing a service or product from a place that has a physical location.
List your contact information - telephone, fax (if needed), email & name.
If you have a bigger budget, use any of the "Hacker Safe" services and place those icons on your site. Again, this tells Google that you are seriously committed to protecting your visitor's experience on the site.
Those are simple techniques that you can directly apply to your site, and are signals to Google that you take your online presence seriously.
As far as the "Off-page" factors, it's really about linking to quality sites that are relevant and sometimes considered "authority sites" by Google. Also, getting links from those trusted sites will help re-enforce the quality of your site in the eyes of the Google spiders.
-To your online success!
About The Author
Paul Bliss
www.seoforgoogle.com
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Advantages of Using CSS in SEO Campaigns
By - Adriana Iordan
<)))
Good tips about how to use CSS for effective SEO campaigns
Nowadays, when everybody is interested in getting the highest rankings possible for their sites with the search engines, it seems that the era of tables-based web sites is getting closer and closer to its end. CSS programming appears to hold the upper hand in this race for SEO, and it gains more ground as its popularity increases.
What is CSS?
Cascading Style Sheet is a web tool that can be utterly necessary if you want to give a professional, qualitative look to your site. It is recommended by W3C, who manages the standards for the Internet, in order to add style (e.g. fonts, colors, spacing, padding, alignment, etc.) to web documents.
The style sheet is more and more used presently due to its usefulness and its advantages that are far from minor: it mainly allows to dissociate the content and the presentation of web pages, which makes them compatible for various browsers, and also accessible to people with disabilities (who must use accessibility readers), to PDAs or to WAP.
Benefits of Using CSS for SEO
Among the most common examples of CSS usage there are the modification of the colors of hovered links, text placement, establishing the spacing between words, and the modification of border size and style. The style sheets can be inserted directly into the HTML code of each page, but they can also be written on a different page, in an external file (.css).
This second solution is by far the best one, primarily because it holds undeniable advantages such as:
The HTML code on each page is much cleaner
The CSS file is cached from the very beginning, and this speeds up the load time for the next pages
The update process can be performed much faster: it suffices to modify a single file to change the entire site, no matter the number of its pages.
It is quite easy to see the close connection between search engine optimization and CSS. Style sheets will help you decrease the file size of your web pages, and will give you the opportunity to use more text and links than regular HTML, without being constantly afraid of spamming the search engines.
Here is what you can achieve with CSS:
1. Reduced file-size
While "traditional" HTML is overcharged with tags that offer to search engine spiders both the content and the presentation on the same page, CSS actually allows you to clean up your code and separate these two.
By including the styling of the text in a separate file, you can dramatically decrease the file-size of your pages. Also, the content-to-code ratio is far greater than with simple HTML pages, thus making the page structure easier to read for both the programmer and the spiders.
It is also possible to avoid using JavaScript for rollovers and mouseovers. With CSS you can define the visual effect that you want to apply to images, instead of using images per say. The space you gain this way can be used for text that is relevant for spiders (i.e. keywords), and you will also lower the file-size of the page.
2. Less load time
If you have a web site with lots of traffic, slow-loading pages will not make your life easier. The benefit of having low file-size pages translates into reduced bandwidth costs.
CSS can help you save some money by offering you the following advantages:
If the presentation information is placed in an external CSS file, this will be accessed only once, when the homepage is loaded. The CSS file will be cached on the user's computer, and the other pages of the site, that use the same CSS file, will load much faster.
Images can be set as backgrounds. They will load faster than images placed between HTML tags.
As opposed to tables, CSS needs less code, which means that browsers will read and display page content faster than they would in the case of tables-based pages.
3. Faster update
Since CSS brings forth a simplification of the code on each page, they are much faster to read and changes can be performed easier. HTML code that needs to be modified is easier to track, and a simple change in the presentation of an element in the CSS file will reflect in all the pages where that particular element is present, without being necessary to update each and every page separately.
4. Increased browser compatibility
CSS-based web sites are compatible with PDA and mobile phone browsers. Also, people with various disabilities (mainly visual) use what are called "accessibility readers", that translate the HTML code into various formats that contain no HTML tags.
When translated, traditional, pure HTML stands many chances of being turned into something that does not make much sense to the impaired visitor. CSS, on the other hand, properly combined with HTML, can render useless the elimination of the HTML tags, and therefore make the reorganization of the content for readability unnecessary.
5. Higher rankings with the search engines
CSS improves the readability of your pages. Search engines spider will be able to index your pages much faster, as the important information can be placed higher in the HTML document. Also, the amount of relevant content will be greater than the amount of code on a page.
The search engine will not have to look too far in your code to find the real content. You will be actually serving it to the spiders "on a platter". CSS will help you create highly readable pages, rich in content, which will prove extremely helpful in your SEO campaign. As you very well know, better site ranking means better visibility on the web, and this can translate into more visitors and, ultimately, into increased sales or number of contracts.
The Caveat of CSS
CSS and SEO make a good pair when it comes to potentially gaining more income, based on a clean, well-built web site. Nevertheless, there is a very important matter that you should consider when using CSS in order to optimize your web site: never use CSS in order to hide text.
It is quite common practice to attempt to offer different versions of text on a web page: one that is harder to read - to spiders, and a friendlier one - to human web readers. Most of the times, search engines will perceive this as cloaking, and even if it's made with the best intentions in mind, it could actually pass as spamming. Consequently, your site can be penalized and even banned for such practices.
Conclusions
The bottom line would be that CSS is much easier to understand and to optimize than simple HTML. It simplifies both the work of the SEO professional, as well as that of the programmer. CSS programming means providing the site with the ability of faster updates in the future, of faster information transfer, and brings along the advantage of a simple code for search engines.
If we think only about the fact that keywords can be highlighted on a page without negatively affecting its look, the page file-size decreases, the code becomes cleaner and more readable, and the bandwidth costs are diminished by lowering the page load time, then it would be safe to say that there is virtually no limit in the series of advantages of using CSS in SEO campaigns.
About The Author
This article was written by Adriana Iordan, Web Marketing Manager at Avangate B.V. Avangate is a complete ecommerce provider for shareware sales incorporating an easy to use and secure online payment system plus additional software marketing services and sales tools.
<)))
Good tips about how to use CSS for effective SEO campaigns
Nowadays, when everybody is interested in getting the highest rankings possible for their sites with the search engines, it seems that the era of tables-based web sites is getting closer and closer to its end. CSS programming appears to hold the upper hand in this race for SEO, and it gains more ground as its popularity increases.
What is CSS?
Cascading Style Sheet is a web tool that can be utterly necessary if you want to give a professional, qualitative look to your site. It is recommended by W3C, who manages the standards for the Internet, in order to add style (e.g. fonts, colors, spacing, padding, alignment, etc.) to web documents.
The style sheet is more and more used presently due to its usefulness and its advantages that are far from minor: it mainly allows to dissociate the content and the presentation of web pages, which makes them compatible for various browsers, and also accessible to people with disabilities (who must use accessibility readers), to PDAs or to WAP.
Benefits of Using CSS for SEO
Among the most common examples of CSS usage there are the modification of the colors of hovered links, text placement, establishing the spacing between words, and the modification of border size and style. The style sheets can be inserted directly into the HTML code of each page, but they can also be written on a different page, in an external file (.css).
This second solution is by far the best one, primarily because it holds undeniable advantages such as:
The HTML code on each page is much cleaner
The CSS file is cached from the very beginning, and this speeds up the load time for the next pages
The update process can be performed much faster: it suffices to modify a single file to change the entire site, no matter the number of its pages.
It is quite easy to see the close connection between search engine optimization and CSS. Style sheets will help you decrease the file size of your web pages, and will give you the opportunity to use more text and links than regular HTML, without being constantly afraid of spamming the search engines.
Here is what you can achieve with CSS:
1. Reduced file-size
While "traditional" HTML is overcharged with tags that offer to search engine spiders both the content and the presentation on the same page, CSS actually allows you to clean up your code and separate these two.
By including the styling of the text in a separate file, you can dramatically decrease the file-size of your pages. Also, the content-to-code ratio is far greater than with simple HTML pages, thus making the page structure easier to read for both the programmer and the spiders.
It is also possible to avoid using JavaScript for rollovers and mouseovers. With CSS you can define the visual effect that you want to apply to images, instead of using images per say. The space you gain this way can be used for text that is relevant for spiders (i.e. keywords), and you will also lower the file-size of the page.
2. Less load time
If you have a web site with lots of traffic, slow-loading pages will not make your life easier. The benefit of having low file-size pages translates into reduced bandwidth costs.
CSS can help you save some money by offering you the following advantages:
If the presentation information is placed in an external CSS file, this will be accessed only once, when the homepage is loaded. The CSS file will be cached on the user's computer, and the other pages of the site, that use the same CSS file, will load much faster.
Images can be set as backgrounds. They will load faster than images placed between HTML tags.
As opposed to tables, CSS needs less code, which means that browsers will read and display page content faster than they would in the case of tables-based pages.
3. Faster update
Since CSS brings forth a simplification of the code on each page, they are much faster to read and changes can be performed easier. HTML code that needs to be modified is easier to track, and a simple change in the presentation of an element in the CSS file will reflect in all the pages where that particular element is present, without being necessary to update each and every page separately.
4. Increased browser compatibility
CSS-based web sites are compatible with PDA and mobile phone browsers. Also, people with various disabilities (mainly visual) use what are called "accessibility readers", that translate the HTML code into various formats that contain no HTML tags.
When translated, traditional, pure HTML stands many chances of being turned into something that does not make much sense to the impaired visitor. CSS, on the other hand, properly combined with HTML, can render useless the elimination of the HTML tags, and therefore make the reorganization of the content for readability unnecessary.
5. Higher rankings with the search engines
CSS improves the readability of your pages. Search engines spider will be able to index your pages much faster, as the important information can be placed higher in the HTML document. Also, the amount of relevant content will be greater than the amount of code on a page.
The search engine will not have to look too far in your code to find the real content. You will be actually serving it to the spiders "on a platter". CSS will help you create highly readable pages, rich in content, which will prove extremely helpful in your SEO campaign. As you very well know, better site ranking means better visibility on the web, and this can translate into more visitors and, ultimately, into increased sales or number of contracts.
The Caveat of CSS
CSS and SEO make a good pair when it comes to potentially gaining more income, based on a clean, well-built web site. Nevertheless, there is a very important matter that you should consider when using CSS in order to optimize your web site: never use CSS in order to hide text.
It is quite common practice to attempt to offer different versions of text on a web page: one that is harder to read - to spiders, and a friendlier one - to human web readers. Most of the times, search engines will perceive this as cloaking, and even if it's made with the best intentions in mind, it could actually pass as spamming. Consequently, your site can be penalized and even banned for such practices.
Conclusions
The bottom line would be that CSS is much easier to understand and to optimize than simple HTML. It simplifies both the work of the SEO professional, as well as that of the programmer. CSS programming means providing the site with the ability of faster updates in the future, of faster information transfer, and brings along the advantage of a simple code for search engines.
If we think only about the fact that keywords can be highlighted on a page without negatively affecting its look, the page file-size decreases, the code becomes cleaner and more readable, and the bandwidth costs are diminished by lowering the page load time, then it would be safe to say that there is virtually no limit in the series of advantages of using CSS in SEO campaigns.
About The Author
This article was written by Adriana Iordan, Web Marketing Manager at Avangate B.V. Avangate is a complete ecommerce provider for shareware sales incorporating an easy to use and secure online payment system plus additional software marketing services and sales tools.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Why You Need Outbound Links
By - Paul Bliss
<)))
Just in case you've forgotten, an outbound link is a url that you have on your site that points to another website.
In today's Google PR obsessed Internet world, everyone is completely focusing on getting in bound links to your site. While you should always be on a mission to get more sites to link to yours, you must not forget their polar opposites.
Remember, by having outbound links from your site, you are in essence "voting" for the site you link to. This is part of the entire ranking algorithm process for all the search engines. The idea is, that if two sites are similar in content and design, a site with more links pointing to it would be considered more important by the search engine.
So then, why should you help out any other site? Actually, by carefully linking to other relevant sites, you are increasing the relevancy of your own site.
Pretend I have a pizza shop, and I am located in Anywhere, USA. It's a typical site that displays types of pizza, store location, hours, and coupons. I also know the power of outbound linking. For this case, I am going to link to 10 sites: Domino's, Pizza Hut, Little Ceaser’s & Papa Johns. Next, I link to 6 sites that are physically located in Anywhere, USA. (And their physical addresses are listed on their sites.)
Now, I will switch roles and view the site as a search engine spider. I navigate through the site, and determine that this site is about pizza. Then I find a resource page and discover some well-known links (Domino's, Pizza Hut, Little Ceaser’s & Papa Johns - and as the spider I know that these are major players in the realm of pizza). Next, I find 6 links to sites located in Anywhere, USA.
So, as a happy spider leaving the site, I now know that the site I just visited is about pizza (site content and links to the major players of the pizza industry), and that it is located in Anywhere, USA.
Next, I visit one of the 6 sites listed as a resource in Anywhere, USA. I find the local address, and it has the same zip code as the pizza site I was just at. Now I know how these two sites are related to each other.
Taking into account the fact that this local pizza shop has also linked to the major pizza chains, as the spider, I am lead to believe that this shop has relevancy to the zip code of Anywhere, USA.
So, as the spider returns the information to the database to be processed in the algorithm, it has pre-sorted some search results based on the links your site points to.
Another benefit of outbound linking is Geo Targeting, or Local search. There is a lot of speculation that local search is the next big trend in Search Marketing. While only time will tell, it won't hurt to have your physical address listed on your website for those who will be embracing local search.
As an experiment, I created a site with a very unique url (to avoid the possibility of people finding it by accident), and I made it only 1 page long. The only thing the page consisted of were 80+ outbound links to relevant sites in the SEO industry, tools, forums and some tutorials. When the PageRank was first updated for the site, it came out of the box with a PR of 3. It has since fallen to a PR of 2 (now that I’ve pointed a few sites to it!).
The whole point of this experiment was to see how outbound links affect your own rankings of your site. I was able to generate a PR of 2 based entirely on linking to authority sites in the SEO industry. So, take the time to link to some relevant sites, the big names (if any), and enjoy the power of the easy, outbound link.
-To your online success!
About The Author
Paul Bliss
www.SEOforGoogle.com
<)))
Just in case you've forgotten, an outbound link is a url that you have on your site that points to another website.
In today's Google PR obsessed Internet world, everyone is completely focusing on getting in bound links to your site. While you should always be on a mission to get more sites to link to yours, you must not forget their polar opposites.
Remember, by having outbound links from your site, you are in essence "voting" for the site you link to. This is part of the entire ranking algorithm process for all the search engines. The idea is, that if two sites are similar in content and design, a site with more links pointing to it would be considered more important by the search engine.
So then, why should you help out any other site? Actually, by carefully linking to other relevant sites, you are increasing the relevancy of your own site.
Pretend I have a pizza shop, and I am located in Anywhere, USA. It's a typical site that displays types of pizza, store location, hours, and coupons. I also know the power of outbound linking. For this case, I am going to link to 10 sites: Domino's, Pizza Hut, Little Ceaser’s & Papa Johns. Next, I link to 6 sites that are physically located in Anywhere, USA. (And their physical addresses are listed on their sites.)
Now, I will switch roles and view the site as a search engine spider. I navigate through the site, and determine that this site is about pizza. Then I find a resource page and discover some well-known links (Domino's, Pizza Hut, Little Ceaser’s & Papa Johns - and as the spider I know that these are major players in the realm of pizza). Next, I find 6 links to sites located in Anywhere, USA.
So, as a happy spider leaving the site, I now know that the site I just visited is about pizza (site content and links to the major players of the pizza industry), and that it is located in Anywhere, USA.
Next, I visit one of the 6 sites listed as a resource in Anywhere, USA. I find the local address, and it has the same zip code as the pizza site I was just at. Now I know how these two sites are related to each other.
Taking into account the fact that this local pizza shop has also linked to the major pizza chains, as the spider, I am lead to believe that this shop has relevancy to the zip code of Anywhere, USA.
So, as the spider returns the information to the database to be processed in the algorithm, it has pre-sorted some search results based on the links your site points to.
Another benefit of outbound linking is Geo Targeting, or Local search. There is a lot of speculation that local search is the next big trend in Search Marketing. While only time will tell, it won't hurt to have your physical address listed on your website for those who will be embracing local search.
As an experiment, I created a site with a very unique url (to avoid the possibility of people finding it by accident), and I made it only 1 page long. The only thing the page consisted of were 80+ outbound links to relevant sites in the SEO industry, tools, forums and some tutorials. When the PageRank was first updated for the site, it came out of the box with a PR of 3. It has since fallen to a PR of 2 (now that I’ve pointed a few sites to it!).
The whole point of this experiment was to see how outbound links affect your own rankings of your site. I was able to generate a PR of 2 based entirely on linking to authority sites in the SEO industry. So, take the time to link to some relevant sites, the big names (if any), and enjoy the power of the easy, outbound link.
-To your online success!
About The Author
Paul Bliss
www.SEOforGoogle.com
Saturday, May 19, 2007
SEO Tips: Ways to Get Backlinks to Your Website
By - Alan Liew
<)))
Backlinks or inbound links are the key to achieving high rankings in search engines. So to get your website to the top you not only need to optimize your webpages for your targeted keywords but also have to build as many backlinks as possible. There are several ways to get backlinks to your site. Here's how......
Send Link Exchange Requests to Potential Links PartnersBefore starting a link exchange campaign. You need to create a link directory that will be used to provide a link back to your potential link partners. Your website is ready to exchange link with other webmasters once the directory created.
You can find your potential link partners by searching on major search engines like Google and Yahoo for your targeted keywords and then visit each website in top 100 or top 200 listings. Make sure that the site you are requesting a link exchange related to yours. When a potential link partner has been found, you will want to go ahead and add your potential partner's link to the appropriate category in your site's link directory and then send an email to the potential link partner stating:
a) That you have linking to your potential link partner.b) A direct link to the page where the potential link partner listing can be found.c) How it would benefit to the potential link partner's if linking to you.d) Your linking details.
To achieve better result, you should not get backlinks to your home page only. Try to get links pointing to your other webpages too. Also use more than one keyword anchor text.
Article MarketingWriting several articles and submitting them to article directories for publication is a great way to build one-way links. By including a link to your website in your articles resource box, you not only gain quality one-way links but also drive free targeted traffic to your site. Your articles may drive truckloads of traffic if they are impressive. There are hundreds of article directories if not thousands. You can find them by going to Google and entering the search term 'article directories'.
DirectoriesSubmitting your website's link to directories is another way of getting backlinks. Directories normally offer 3 types of listings:
1) Paid listing 2) Free listing3) Free listing but require a link back from you.
If you choose the first or third option and your website meets the submission guidelines and rules of the directories, your link will usually be listed within days. If you select the second option, you have to wait longer and your website's listings aren't guaranteed.
Getting listed in quality directories with Google page rank 7 or higher such as DMOZ and Yahoo directory can be more beneficial for increasing your rankings than a lot of links from smaller and newer directories. But it is not easy to be accepted by these quality directories.
Press ReleasePress release is simply an announcement of an important event for your business. Just like article marketing, you can gain one-way links by writing a press release with a link pointing to your site and submitting it to other websites. To find websites that accept press release, you can go to Google and enter the search term 'submit press release'.
Affiliate ProgramIf you are selling a product or a membership service, launching an affiliate program is a good idea to increase both your inbound links and online sales. Webmasters that are interested to market your product will place your link on their websites and you get free one-way links.
About The Author
Alan Liew is the webmaster of online4income.com which provides information, tips and ideas of how to make money online. You can also visit his blog to find out more ways to make money online.
<)))
Backlinks or inbound links are the key to achieving high rankings in search engines. So to get your website to the top you not only need to optimize your webpages for your targeted keywords but also have to build as many backlinks as possible. There are several ways to get backlinks to your site. Here's how......
Send Link Exchange Requests to Potential Links PartnersBefore starting a link exchange campaign. You need to create a link directory that will be used to provide a link back to your potential link partners. Your website is ready to exchange link with other webmasters once the directory created.
You can find your potential link partners by searching on major search engines like Google and Yahoo for your targeted keywords and then visit each website in top 100 or top 200 listings. Make sure that the site you are requesting a link exchange related to yours. When a potential link partner has been found, you will want to go ahead and add your potential partner's link to the appropriate category in your site's link directory and then send an email to the potential link partner stating:
a) That you have linking to your potential link partner.b) A direct link to the page where the potential link partner listing can be found.c) How it would benefit to the potential link partner's if linking to you.d) Your linking details.
To achieve better result, you should not get backlinks to your home page only. Try to get links pointing to your other webpages too. Also use more than one keyword anchor text.
Article MarketingWriting several articles and submitting them to article directories for publication is a great way to build one-way links. By including a link to your website in your articles resource box, you not only gain quality one-way links but also drive free targeted traffic to your site. Your articles may drive truckloads of traffic if they are impressive. There are hundreds of article directories if not thousands. You can find them by going to Google and entering the search term 'article directories'.
DirectoriesSubmitting your website's link to directories is another way of getting backlinks. Directories normally offer 3 types of listings:
1) Paid listing 2) Free listing3) Free listing but require a link back from you.
If you choose the first or third option and your website meets the submission guidelines and rules of the directories, your link will usually be listed within days. If you select the second option, you have to wait longer and your website's listings aren't guaranteed.
Getting listed in quality directories with Google page rank 7 or higher such as DMOZ and Yahoo directory can be more beneficial for increasing your rankings than a lot of links from smaller and newer directories. But it is not easy to be accepted by these quality directories.
Press ReleasePress release is simply an announcement of an important event for your business. Just like article marketing, you can gain one-way links by writing a press release with a link pointing to your site and submitting it to other websites. To find websites that accept press release, you can go to Google and enter the search term 'submit press release'.
Affiliate ProgramIf you are selling a product or a membership service, launching an affiliate program is a good idea to increase both your inbound links and online sales. Webmasters that are interested to market your product will place your link on their websites and you get free one-way links.
About The Author
Alan Liew is the webmaster of online4income.com which provides information, tips and ideas of how to make money online. You can also visit his blog to find out more ways to make money online.
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