Search Engine Optimization Myths.

Filed Under (SEO Tips) by admin on 01-10-2009

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For as long as SEO has been in existence, there have been all sorts of myths about it, and the situation isnt helped by the number of so-called experts spreading them. Heres a list of the biggest SEO myths:

You cant optimize perfectly for every site

There are 10,000 search engines out there

PageRank is dead

Your should repeat your keywords 100 times on each page

Search engines dont have time to ban you for bad SEO

You should submit your site to every search engine going

You dont need content to get ranked high

Meta tags are very important

All you need is more links

SEO doesnt require patience

New sites cant get listed in search engines

You should have multiple domain names

Its good to resubmit every week or every month

If you find companies that tell you any of these things, then you should run away as fast as you can. Dont pay attention to the myths of SEO the only techniques you should be using are ones that are proven to increase your websites ranking.

There are a lot of unethical, unprofessional business practices in the optimization industry, and you need to make sure you have enough facts on your side to compare the services youre being offered. To have a good SEO campaign, you cant fall victim to the kind of big promises that are always un-promised in the small print. Dont throw away your money: invest it properly in good marketing, advertising, and content.

When inexperienced and unprofessional optimizers scam uneducated SEO customers, it gives everyone who works in the field a bad name. If anyone tells you that its OK to keyword stuff, or that you dont need PageRank well, theyre just completely wrong.

If youre trying to make money with your website, you need visitors, and thats where SEO comes in. SEO is important because of the amount of competition you have. When youre competing in a worldwide market, you need to stand out.

Web hosting Services and Domain names

Filed Under (SEO Basics) by admin on 16-09-2009

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Choosing an appropriate domain name is very important. First and foremost, when it comes to domain names, try to stay away from the silly, stupid, ridiculous or clever. Keep your domain name simple and make it something your customers can remember if they lose the link to your business website.

Take note that, while your domain name on Geocities or AOL may seem like the least expensive way to go, it may also get you dropped from certain search engines. Some search engines ignore domain addresses that reside on these free servers or on the cheap servers.

Even if your site is recognized and considered by search engines, a professional domain name that uses your primary company name or associated words is likely to get more attention and be considered as a stable business by your prospective customers.

Purchasing domain names are not that expensive which cost about $100 and there are many companies that can register the name for you, provided it is available and has not already been used by another company.

Using one of your keywords in your domain name can increase your score on some search engines. For example, solderingirons.com could be more effective as Electric-soldering-irons.com, if that domain name was available.

You might also choose to establish more than one domain name using keywords and then link your doorway domain sites to your primary site. But you will have to pay for each of the domain name and also the monthly hosting fees. It all depends on the type and size of your business and your competition.

Keep in mind that some search engines disregard doorway sites. So put at least a page of content on the doorway site with some useful information and then link it to your primary site. But dont design it as an empty page. The other reason being, you can have one, three, five, or even more email addresses that all contain your business name, and give your business a professional feel. When customers get emails from dominicstone@solderingirons.com they feel as if they are dealing with a stable, professional business operation.

No need for customers to understand how you manage all your email boxes on your domain. They just need to feel your business is dependable and reputable.

Domain and Page Naming Tricks for Better SEO Results.

Filed Under (SEO Tips) by admin on 14-09-2009

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The importance of domain and page naming is obvious, but you might not have realized the connection to SEO. We all know that unless our domain name is highly recognizable and memorable then we wont get many customers, but good domain names also matter when it comes to search engine rankings the more relevant your domain is to your keywords, the higher it will be ranked.

Domain names are not that difficult to come by at this point. Godaddy.com puts out some great prices and they run all sorts of specials once you become a customer. The more domains that you buy the more that they like you. The basic concept here is that people who buy a few domain names are probably going to become pretty big on the internet. The more that you own the more powerful you are. Domain names are like land in the early eighteenth century. They are valuable and the owners become a sort of elite class on the internet.

The value of domains is difficult to determine until you have purchased one and worked with it for a while. The difference between owning your own domain name and hosting your site on a sub domain or in a subdirectory of a domain is huge. The impact on your ability to perform SEO operations increases drastically simply by the ease of clarifying your URL for the search engines and directories that you submit to.

There are even directories out there that do not except anything except for domains. These are the kind of elitist sites that I described earlier. Domain names are the only way to go if you want to have a seriously successful website that becomes a household name. Directories that do not allow non-domain names are there to protect an investment. If you have spent money on purchasing and hosting a domain name you probably arent to excited about seeing sites that havent dropped a dime on investment being rated above you. This is a sort of aristecratic mind set, but it is a natural tendency of the mind. There are plenty of directories out there that everybody is able to access, but there are some out there that are only for the elite sites of the internet.

This elitist attitude towards domain names is beneficial to your sites because it allows you to get an edge on other sites simply by buying a domain name. This investment is the most crucial SEO investment that you can make. There are very few sites around that get huge numbers of hits (10,000+ per month) without having their own domain name.

So what do you need to do to get these good rankings? Start off by choosing a domain that matches your website well, and youre killing two birds with one stone. Your domain name and URL should reflect what youre trying to accomplish from your site. For example: calling your website thewebcorporation.com isnt much good if it sells hot sauce. For hot sauce, deserthotsauce.com would be a better name the deserts hot, like the sauce! Dont settle for anything that wont make people want to come to your site. Using the name of your company for your domain name is also a good way to go. This is the fastest way of providing a good, quality description of what the visitor is going to. Many visitors will actually consider your domain name the name of your company anyway so you might as well name yourself something that you want to be called.

Most webmasters settle for safe, can’t-go-wrong www.myname.com domains, because it takes time to be creative and think up good names that contain your keywords. You might consider getting some help from the people around you, as you never know what they might be thinking that could be great. You need to come up with a few ideas in case some are taken youll be surprised just how many domains have gone.

Everyone always wants a .com, but you shouldnt rule out .net, .org, .us and the rest. For example, if deserthotsauce.com is taken, you might find that people like deserthotsauce.us just as much.

Do-It-Yourself SEO.

Filed Under (SEO Tips) by admin on 13-09-2009

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Does the whole idea of Internet marketing intimidate you? Are you thinking of hiring a professional? Well, weve got great news for you. Its really not difficult to do search engine optimization (SEO) yourself you can save hundreds of dollars, and get the same results as the professionals do. You will probably get better results from highly qualified professionals, but you should definitely perform these do-it-yourself actions first. Once youve done some of this kind of work it will be easier to determine if a professional is worth his/her salt.

Basic SEO is very simple and easy all it takes is the willingness to put in the work. Once you know the ropes, its not that difficult though it can be time consuming. The content of your website the focus of what SEO is all about. Here are the top points to think about when youre doing it yourself.

1. You will start by registering a domain name, which should reflect what your site about. Keep it short, as long as its somehow related to your site. Being more specific can help. You could choose to name the page after one of your products or services, for example. Another method is to get a sub domain of a popular domain. This will generally help you get indexed more quickly though it will not appear quite as professional to your visitors. There is a trade of here, sub domains are quicker (and generally cheaper), but domain names are more memorable, and, in the long run, better for your indexing.

2. The next thing you should look at is your pages title (i.e. the HTML title tag), which is critical in letting search engines see what the page is about, and is the first item looked at by search engines to determine your relevance. You should put your most important keywords in your title tags you dont need to worry about singular or plural forms as search engines account for these changes in most cases. Whatever you do, don’t call your home page Home make the title a mini-description of the page.

3. The two primary meta tags arent as important as they used to be, but the description tag is still used by some search engines to display information about your website to users and help them decide whether theyve found what they are looking for. Not all search engines bother with this, though most will put some bearing on it (even if it is minuscule).

For very short descriptions the alt tag can be used. Alt tags let you describe an image or graphic file theyre the pop-up descriptions that appear when you hover your mouse over a graphic, or when the graphic cant be downloaded for whatever reason.

Text within comment tags is never displayed on the page it is used by coders and designers to remind them of what that part of the page is for. Some coders used to put lots of keywords in the comment tags, so that they would be seen by search engines but not users, but search engines have now stopped paying attention to any text that isnt seen by the user. Keep this in mind when trying to post invisible text (i.e. white text on a white background). This kind of behavior can get you banned from a search engine.

4. Having keyword density in all of your content is good, but keep in mind that each search engine has its own requirements when it comes to how many times that a keyword or phrase should be in the content for the page to be relevant. Somewhere between 5 and 8 percent is a roughly optimal level but this isnt always possible, and you shouldnt force it. Dont overdo it, or the search engines might mark you down.

5. Many search engines judge web page importance on the number and quality of incoming links from other sites. You should link to some related sites, but not too many. Dont overdo incoming links either, and keep them related your sites content. Its also good to get sites to use your keywords as the text of these links.

If you follow the advice above, you can do it yourself and do fine. SEO, if done right, can keep you on top for as long as you want to be.