The Basic SEO Rules for All Websites.

Filed Under (SEO Tips) by admin on 10-10-2009

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Search engine optimization isnt rocket science, but it can feel complicated at times. Theres no need to worry about the jargon when youre just starting out, though, and part of the point of SEO is to make everything simpler and cleaner, the way search engines like it.

Everything a search engine does has a pattern and a reason. Even if the algorithms are too complex for you to understand, there are patterns that can be found if you look hard enough. All you have to do in order to find the patterns is be willing to look for them which basically just consists of keeping your eyes and your mind open.

Being good at SEO requires some effort, but is for the most part very basic. To have a successful campaign, just follow these simple rules they apply to all websites.

Search engines always try to give users whatever they can find that is relevant to their search. You have to realize that most search engines dont work by moving the good stuff towards the top: instead, they try to push the bad stuff towards the bottom, and hope that whats good will float up. Content is King and it can get you good search engine rankings easily if its written properly and sprinkled with the appropriate keywords. This not only brings visitors to your site but also feeds search engine spiders and crawlers. I cant stress enough that good content is the key to good SEO.

A fast way to develop good content is to generate a series of articles or an ebook regarding your topic. These items are very powerful in the world of SEO because they provide your visitors with something to read and they allow you to conquer some key words that you normally wouldnt be able to touch. If you are managing a website for pets, an article about dog food is more likely to generate a high position in the search results for dog food than your home page. Therefore, if you write articles pertaining to your subject but slightly more in depth than you can put on your home page, you will benefit drastically.

To try to get to number one in an index, you must first find out where your site is now. That means checking each search engine to see your position, and coming up with a strategy for each one who knows, maybe youre already number one on one of the smaller search engines! You cant just assume, however, that because your site is listed in one search engine that it will be listed in all of them. Thats not how search engines work.

Look at the sites that currently rank high on the search engines and you will see that have simple designs with graphics that use minimal bandwidth, and theyre easy to navigate. Simple, clean designs are what both search engine crawlers and search engine users like, as it lets them get the content they want without any fuss. This is what you should be aiming for.

Some sites are considered good enough to be ranked highly in search engines, even though their designs make them difficult to look at. This goes to show that the looks of a site have nothing to do with where a search engines places it in the rankings all search engines care about is text. If the content of a site is relevant to what people are searching for then thats all that matters to a search engine.

Lets take a look at meta tags, keywords, descriptions, and titles. Theyre all important elements, even if theyre not what will make or break your site theyre just one part of your strategy. These elements need to be compelling and sprinkled with your keywords, as this will entice users to click through from the search results page to your website. Its best to start off slowly, gradually adding things in as you learn.

If you have any questions and you dont know where to go, then check out some of the forums on the subject just do a search for seo forum. These people are usually more than willing to post answers to your questions, or direct you to someone who can answer your question if they cant. Remember to be patient with yourself: learning something new takes time and effort, and SEO is no different.

Long Term SEO Maintenance Tips.

Filed Under (SEO Tips) by admin on 28-09-2009

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Long-term SEO maintenance requires dedication to your website. There are people who think that they can throw up a web page and that people will find them, and good luck too them but it wont happen. Any website that wants to make money needs to get optimized, and stay that way. Running and SEO campaign once or twice isnt enough in this market: you need to consider long-term maintenance of your SEO.

For long term SEO maintenance to be effective, you need to constantly monitor the search engines algorithms, which can change very frequently. You also need to keep track of your competitors optimizations and adapt your strategy accordingly.

Always consider your website as an investment youve put time, money and effort into it. Your investment needs to be protected, and the way to do that is SEO maintenance. This makes sure that your website is ranked high enough to bring you the traffic you need, and keeps the sales coming.

Weve compiled a list of tips to help you with your SEO maintenance. To keep good rankings, you need to pay attention to how your site is doing. A few things to remember are:

1. Check on your pages regularly and make sure theyre still listed. Your listings are the most important part of your SEO work. Whether the page is listed or not is vastly more important than what key words you have etc. After all, if you arent listed at all what good is it to optimize?

2. Monitor the listings every week or two to make sure your pages are displaying correctly and that there are no problems with your site. While your at it see whether youve risen, dropped, or remained constant as far as listings go. Odds are that you will not remain constant, if you do remain constant you should consider this a small success as you have probably risen above other pages that were formerly above you while others from below you have surpassed you.

3. Watch for trouble, and fix it quickly. Dont think it will correct itself it won’t. Any missing pages should be checked out thoroughly. Chances are that the system has run into a problem, but if you dont check it out you may very easily be wrong. Always correct any of your mistakes as your mistakes can be very costly if they are not dealt with in a timely fashion.

4. Resubmit your site if you make major changes, but not for anything smaller. The most important time to resubmit your site is if you have recently changed your titles. Titles are very important in SEO and can deliver you with a completely new set of quality key words.

5. Create monthly ranking reports on your site, to see if any changes need to be made.

6. Keep building your link popularity.

7. Keep submitting your site to the big directories, as spiders use these as a starting point.

8. Watch your competitors and the methods they use. If they start trying to cheat, report them straightaway it gets them out of your way.

9. Set goals for yourself. Write out an SEO maintenance plan, and if things change then make sure to set new goals and stick with them.

10. Stay up to date on the latest SEO information.

11. Check your sites performance if youre not monitoring your traffic, find a tool to do it now.

12. Maintain a solid plan for dealing with your sites growth. Dont panic if you see a blip.

This might seem like a lot of work for a small website or company, but you need to do it to help your website grow. If you dont have growth, you have nothing. No business wants to stay where it is forever, and SEO is a good way to get more business and stay in the race.

Do you remember why you started a website to begin with? The chances are you wanted to make money. Your website is a business, and you need to run it like one. Dont stress too much over the work involved: its only a few hours each week in total, and you can do it whenever you want.

Seo Services

Filed Under (Free SEO) by admin on 28-09-2009

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Search engine optimization or SEO refers to optimizing the web pages of a website as per the algorithms so as to achieve high rankings of the website in the various search engines. With the help of search engine optimization, you can place your website in the first few positions in a search engine for a strategically defined set of keywords. The higher the ranking of the website, the better are the chances of increased traffic to it. This leads to more sales and more customers.

SEO is a growing trend in India. With more and more Indian consumers and Indian SEO companies waking up to online marketing and online shopping for products and services, we can expect a major boom in search engine optimization in India few years down the line. For Indian companies, the internet is the greatest boon for marketing and reaching out to potential customers. This is so because the horizons of marketing on the internet are limitless and a company can reach absolutely targeted potential customers all across the world.

SEO has become the most discussed topic in marketing in India, these days. And since no one can ignore the fact that it will be the most important marketing medium, more and more companies are turning towards SEO consultants for SEO services. Through the various SEO services, the companies can promote their websites. This would help them strengthen their online position and presence.

In order to be a successful online company, an Indian company must understand that it is very necessary to allocate a portion of their marketing budget to the promotion of their website if they want to stay ahead in the competition. While a company is investing in advertising in the print or electronic media like the TV, it should also give importance to the online marketing and the promotion of its websites to generate more and more customers. Search engine optimization companies in India like Mosaic service is proving as an effective tool to optimize the website.

The future of marketing in India has immense potentiality for online web marketing and it is through online marketing that one can expect to stay ahead in the competition. As the number of Indian hooked on to the net is increasing at a fast pace, the Indian companies can expect to get their attention more through the search engines than any other medium of communication and this will result in the boom of SEO services in India.

SEO for CEOs Search Engine Optimization Unmasked for CEOs

Filed Under (Free SEO) by admin on 23-09-2009

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SEO for CEOs Search Engine Optimization Unmasked for CEOs

If youre like most other CEOs, the term search engine optimization will mean very little. Either that or it means expense! But it doesnt have to be that way If you feel like youre standing in a dark room handing money to strangers to get you in the search engines, then this article is for you.

This is an article written by a business owner for other business owners and CEOs. It explains Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) in laypersons terms. It wont make you an expert, but it will give you some insight into what youre spending your money on, what you should be spending your money on, and just as importantly, what you shouldnt.

But before launching straight into an explanation of SEO, lets talk a bit about search engines. Approximately 75%-80% of website traffic comes through search engines. Whats more, research shows that most people dont look beyond the first 2 pages of search results. This means if your website doesnt rank in the first 2 pages of the major search engines, its only receiving 20% of its rightful traffic and revenue. (And remember, being ranked number 1 when you search for your company name or web address doesnt count. You need to rank highly for the words your customers use at search engines.)

The biggest concern for search engine companies like Google, Yahoo, etc., is finding content that will bring them more traffic (and thus more advertising revenue). They do this by using complex algorithms to determine whether a site is useful and should be included in their search results.

This is where SEO comes in.

SEO is the art of ranking in the search engines. Nothing more, nothing less.

SEO means creating your site such that the search engines consider it useful. The two main weapons in your arsenal are:

Keywords
Links to your site

KEYWORDS

Figure out what words your customers are looking for at search engines, and use those words at your site. By frequently using keywords that are important to your customers, you tell the search engines what you do. These keywords are used in your copy and in the code behind the page. Generally speaking, the more you use the keywords, the more relevant you are to searches in that field.

Keywords in Your Copy

The use of keywords in your copy is easy to understand. But its not easy to do. You cant just pepper your site with a meaningless array of words. The trick is using the most important keywords a lot without compromising the readability of your copy. Its a balance between writing for the search engines and writing for your reader.

TIP: If you find this too time consuming, a website copywriter can take care of it for you. And if you know your keywords already, it should cost you no more than normal web copy.

Keywords in Your HTML Code

The use of keywords in your HTML code is harder to understand, but its easier to do. There are four main places these keywords are used:

Keywords
Description
Alt
Title

TIP: When you hear people talking about meta tags, this is what theyre talking about. To see how meta tags are used in practice, go to Google and pretend youre a customer. Search for something your customers would search for. e.g. If youre in car audio, search for car audio. Click on the first couple of results to bring up their website. Right-click on the home page, and select View Source. Youll see a whole lot of code. You can ignore most of it. What youre looking for are the following

meta name=”KEYWORDS” CONTENT=”keyword 1,keyword 2,keyword 3″

meta name=”DESCRIPTION” CONTENT=”Meaningful description of page using the main keywords”

img src=”filename.gif” alt=”Meaningful description of picture using the main keywords”

Take a look at the way the creators of the site have used keywords in these areas, and follow their lead. You already know theyre ranked highly, so chances are theyve done a good job. Alternatively, take a look at my site, http://www.divinewrite.com to see how Ive done mine.

LINKS TO YOUR SITE

Now that you know how to tell the search engines what you do, lets talk about how to convince them youre important.

Links to your site (or inbound links) are the most important factor in ranking. The more links you have to your site from other sites, the better your ranking (related sites generate better rankings).

TIP: Think of the Internet as a big election. All the websites in the world are candidates, and all the links to those websites are votes. The more votes (links) a candidate (website) has, the more important it is, and the higher its ranking.

There are many possible ways to generate links. Some are dubious (like auto-generation software). Others are legitimate, but offer limited results (like asking customers and suppliers to list you on their sites, and adding your site to various business directories). You can experiment with these methods, but Ive always found the best way to generate inbound links is to write helpful articles and let publishers of newsletters and e-zines use them for free on the proviso that they link back to your site.

People who publish e-Zines and newsletters are always hungry for quality content. And there are websites out there dedicated to giving them just that. If you submit a well written, relevant, helpful article to one of those sites, you can have thousands of newsletter publishers ready to snap it up. Then you just sit back and watch the links multiply!

TIP: This method is beneficial in other ways too. Readers of your article will see that you know what youre talking about, and because youre published, theyll see you as an authority.

Its impossible to say how much time youll need to spend generating links. You just have to keep at it until you have achieved a high ranking. Even then, youll still need to dedicate some ongoing time to the task, otherwise your ranking will drop.

Summary

So to cut a long story short, it comes down to this. If you have a lot of the right keyword phrases, used in real sentences, distributed realistically throughout your site, and a lot of links from other relevant sites, you stand a good chance of being ranked highly.

Thats what youre paying your providers for. And thats what SEO is all about.

SEO Dos And Donts

Filed Under (Free SEO) by admin on 20-09-2009

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You dont have to be a SEO expert to make a fortune on the web. Search engine optimization is not complicated at all. It may be exhausting and annoying. You may get frustrated. But it is so easy if you know the basic rules. Read the following SEO Dos and Donts and start making money.

SEO Dos :

1. Stay natural Search engines like natural behavior. Remember it whenever you get a tempting proposal to pay for software that will boost your search engine optimization and get you to the top search engine ranks.

2. Links, Links, Links The online world equivalent to: Location, location, location. Links are the foundation stones of your SEO strategy. The quantity and quality of the links pointing to your site are the main criteria that affect your search engine ranking. Never stop creating new links to your site using techniques like links exchanging, articles submitting, affiliate marketing, link buying etc.

3. Page and site optimization Remember, Search Engines like what human like. Optimize your site according to valuable keywords, you have found on wordcount.com or overture. Make the navigation on your site easy and clear.

4. Automate and delegate Do not work on your own use software to automate processes and outsource some of the search engine optimization to others.

SEO Donts:

1. Do not shoot and forget Search engine optimization is an ongoing task. You will not see results in a day or in a month. Do not work on one site too much too fast. In other words, add links and pages to your site gradually.

2. Do not optimize only for the best search engine Google is not the only search engine and all search engine change their ranking algorithms every once in a while. Do your best to get your site in a high place in at least three of the best search engines.

Now that you have read the SEO Dos and Donts, all there is to do is work on your sites search engine optimization. It may take time but it sure worth it You can have fun and lots of money. Good luck.

SEO Content Writing Converting Artificial Keywords Into Natural Keywords.

Filed Under (Free SEO) by admin on 20-09-2009

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SEO Content Writing Converting Artificial Keywords Into Natural Keywords.

The Role Of Keywords Within SEO.

One of the major aspects of search engine optimization (SEO) is the use of keywords both in the Meta tags of a site and throughout the website content. In particular, the density, the placement and the actual keywords themselves are hotly debated topics. It is certainly no secret that keywords play a vital part to any good SEO program, but because search engines like Google and many others change their algorithms on such a regular basis it may seem difficult to keep up with the current best practice. However, there are some good general guidelines to follow that should always ring true regardless of how you personally approach SEO.

Keeping Abreast Of SEO Times.

It can be difficult to say at any given time what the keyword rules are when it comes to SEO content writing, but there are always common worst-practice factors that should be avoided completely. That is, search engines like Google will not only ignore your website content but they will actively penalize you for certain things.

Spam The Big NO!

Search engines do not take spam, or the sites that contain it, lightly. This is the most important thing you should remember. It used to be acceptable in the eyes of search engine robots for your content to be 100% keywords with absolutely no meaningful text. However, this practice of keyword cramming or keyword stuffing is now something that does not go unnoticed and you will face a penalty for using this technique. Yes, keywords are important but you also have to provide solid and informational text for your visitors.

So, What Is The Correct Keyword Density Then?

Of course, this leads to the question of how to determine what is considered spam and what is considered an acceptable level of keywords within your text and again this is a topic that leads to debate between SEO experts, webmasters and content writers alike. The general belief was that including a keyword within your text with a range of 5% to 10% was best practice. It certainly wouldnt get you penalized and it made it blatantly obvious that your site was relevant to that topic. However, some believed the figure could legitimately be taken as high as 20% without any negative search engine effects.

Err On The Side Of Caution.

While these high densities of around 20% may not have got you penalized at one time it is increasingly likely that they will be regarded as being geared primarily towards search engines. Search engines do not want to display sites that are created for this purpose; their aim is to display websites that are geared towards visitors. As such, sticking to a lower percentage is likely to produce better results for you.

Playing It By The Rules.

Keeping the keywords to this sort of level is an art, but it is not one that should elude most people. The art, of course, is to combine search engine optimization with informative content that will appeal to your visitors as well. In order to do this it is important that you use natural keywords.

What Are Natural Keywords And Artificial Keywords?

A natural keyword is one that you would use in everyday conversation relating to a given topic. In the case of your website, if you were to sit down and write 500 words of informative content you would find that certain words naturally creep into the article and appear several times. These are your natural keywords, but unfortunately natural keywords may not provide you with the results you require. For example, a little keyword research may prove that a natural keyword of divorce attorney is a very well searched phrase but there are also 2 million websites geared towards this key phrase. Further research may turn up the fact that Find Divorce Attorneys may be a little less popular with regards to searches but there are only 10,000 sites aiming for this keyword. This instantly improves your chances of being closer to the top of the search results and that coveted top spot.

Replacing Natural Keywords With Artificial Keywords.

So, you now need to go back over the content you have already written and see if the term Find Divorce Attorneys appears within your content. In all honesty, it is quite unlikely that it would appear more than once, if at all. You have to make it fit into your content and you have to make it appear to do so naturally. Find the areas where you specifically used the keyword Divorce Attorney and see if you can swap the phrases with just a little alteration of the surrounding text.

Start From Scratch With Your Artificial Natural Keywords.

Another method is to look for your artificial keywords before you begin and make sure you have them in the back (or the front) of your mind when you sit down to write your website content. Because you are already thinking of the phrase you want to use you will naturally include it within the content of your site. Its not a trick, although you may want to consider it a subliminal tactic if you wish, but it will work.

The Result Of Keyword Conversion.

By converting your artificial keywords into natural keywords you should be able to effectively optimize pages towards both search engines and your visitors and this will mean improved search engine rankings as well as improved conversion rates. Even a small increase in visitors combined with a small increase in conversion rates will show a good level of increase in your income so you should not overlook this technique.

How Do Search Engines Work - Web Crawlers

Filed Under (SEO Basics) by admin on 11-09-2009

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It is the search engines that finally bring your website to the notice of the prospective customers. Hence it is better to know how these search engines actually work and how they present information to the customer initiating a search.

There are basically two types of search engines. The first is by robots called crawlers or spiders.

Search Engines use spiders to index websites. When you submit your website pages to a search engine by completing their required submission page, the search engine spider will index your entire site. A spider is an automated program that is run by the search engine system. Spider visits a web site, read the content on the actual site, the site’s Meta tags and also follow the links that the site connects. The spider then returns all that information back to a central depository, where the data is indexed. It will visit each link you have on your website and index those sites as well. Some spiders will only index a certain number of pages on your site, so dont create a site with 500 pages!

The spider will periodically return to the sites to check for any information that has changed. The frequency with which this happens is determined by the moderators of the search engine.

A spider is almost like a book where it contains the table of contents, the actual content and the links and references for all the websites it finds during its search, and it may index up to a million pages a day.

Example: Excite, Lycos, AltaVista and Google.

When you ask a search engine to locate information, it is actually searching through the index which it has created and not actually searching the Web. Different search engines produce different rankings because not every search engine uses the same algorithm to search through the indices.

One of the things that a search engine algorithm scans for is the frequency and location of keywords on a web page, but it can also detect artificial keyword stuffing or spamdexing. Then the algorithms analyze the way that pages link to other pages in the Web. By checking how pages link to each other, an engine can both determine what a page is about, if the keywords of the linked pages are similar to the keywords on the original page.

Understanding Stop Words, and How to Avoid Them.

Filed Under (SEO Tips) by admin on 16-07-2009

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To understand how to avoid stop words, you first have to understand what stop words are. Search engines have words or phrases that are considered stop words. When a spider or crawler encounters one of these stop words, they will immediately leave your website and any information they gathered from it will not be saved in their database. This means that your website will not be indexed. If your website is already indexed in a searched engine, the crawler will come back to see if there are updates — and if it finds stop words when it does this, then your site could get banned from the search engine. You will not be allowed to remove the words and re-submit: its too late.

Different search engines have different lists, but some are nearly universal usually words that refer to sites with graphic sexual content, or other adult material. We cant really put a list here, or youd never find this page! You should be able to tell what they are for the most part, but remember, pornographic web sites will often get indexed as well. The norm for search engines is that they will attempt to avoid content that is illegal. When they encounter adult oriented sites, they will generally only ban sites that contain especially vulgar or illegal materials. The problem being that many of these sorts of sites will use gateway pages that have no content other than click here to enter. These sites are less likely to be caught with the stop word censors.

These arent the only stop words, however. Some search engines create different lists of stop words for each different kind of website. What does this mean? Well, the algorithms which rank the pages determine how many times on a page a keyword is listed. Keep in mind that there are people trying to keyword stuff their pages to improve their ranking. If a word is not relevant to your site, dont list it in your key words. This is one easy way to avoid losing your index privileges. There is no reason to try to lure people into your site on key words that dont apply as they will not stick around long enough to provide you with revenue anyway.

Now you might be asking what keyword stuffing is. Keyword stuffing is when someone uses the same keywords over and over again in the meta tags and the content of the web page. If youre searching the web and you come across a website that seems to be ranked far too highly, then keyword stuffing is usually to blame. The search engines work hard to stop people from using these kinds of tactics, and usually de-list sites that they find to be using them. Thats why some sites can be listed near the top for a while, before one day seemingly disappearing altogether.

Some sites, however, get ejected for repeated keywords, even though these sites arent trying to keyword stuff. This is where keyword analysis comes into play. To avoid repeating the same word or phrase too many times, you need to analyze your pages before you submit them you wouldnt want your efforts at finding good keywords to go to waste.

Although search engine optimization is a long-term effort, the processes and rules change frequently, without any warning. There are, however, tools available that will help you to stay on top of whats going on in SEO. Many tools can be tried out at no cost, letting you try before you buy. There are so many to choose from that you cant just start downloading them you will want to read the information on each tool before you make a decision.

By using these tools before you submit your pages to any search engines, you will fully understand “stop words” and how to avoid them! You need to keep in mind, though, that different search engines have different stop word lists, so words that dont matter to one search engine can stop your site from being listed on another.

There are also some words that arent included in searches, such as and, of, the, and other small words. You should keep these words out of your meta tags, as theyre just a waste of space.