10 Tips for Raising Your Search Engine Rankings.

Filed Under (SEO Tips) by admin on 15-10-2009

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Search engine rankings are an important factor to consider when you have a website that needs more traffic. If your website doesnt have a good position in the rankings then no-one will find it, so you need to make sure that your website is ranked highly enough to be seen. The other important quality to getting high traffic to your site is having a nice arsenal of links. The more links that you have to your site the more traffic you will get, but also, the more links to your site the more search engines like your site. Keeping a nice supply of links pointing at your site requires similar precautions and practices as getting high search engine listings.

Although no SEO company can guarantee a high ranking for your site, here are some tips for raising your search engine ranking. Using these tips will not get you to the top unless your site is the best out there, but they will at least put you into the positioning that you truly deserve. After all, the internet is basically a free market. You will naturally flow into the place that you deserve and many search engines try to insure that you do not rise above or fall below this position. This is why they are so strict, and this is why you must keep yourself on good terms with them.

1) Content is an important factor in high search engine rankings. Make sure that you have plenty of content throughout your site with your target keywords in the articles. Its also worth doing a search for websites similar to yours and taking a look at their articles for ideas. The more content you have the better. It is generally a good idea to have between three hundred and five hundred words per page, but more important than a quantity of content is the quality of the content that you are providing. You cannot just put out three hundred words of jargon and expect your visitors to find it interesting and stick around for the long haul.

2) Your websites URL can help you rank higher with the search engines if it contains your keywords. However, dont think that naming your site after your keywords will always help your rankings you need to do more than just that.

3) Search terms should be written out in text, instead of graphics. If you do use pictures, be sure to give them alt tags. The alt tags in your pictures are almost as important as text. Its also a good idea to put some of your key words in links to other pages. In the eyes of a search engine it is almost as good to have a link to a page full of the content that the visitor is looking for as it is to have the content that the visitor is looking for on your page. If a visitor is looking for something that you are linking to and he or she finds your page, they may look around your site on the way through.

4) The title of your page is very important, and making sure that you choose it wisely will make a big difference. Terms such free article on safe children’s toys, or contact the children’s toy expert today are good to use as titles, for example they would get you a high ranking. The title area is the most important place to include your keyword phrases, so make sure that you put them all in.

5) The navigation menu that appears on each page of your website should include your pages title.

6) Dont just use the most popular keyword phrases the market is so competitive that you should be sure to include some niche keywords too.

7) Make sure that you dont have a lot of irrelevant links on your site. The more closely related to your site your links are, the better your chances of being ranked in a higher position.
8) You need to periodically update the content of your website, even if its only a slight change, as websites like sites that are kept updated.

9) You need to consider the fact most search engines dont like automatic submissions or multiple submissions submit once, manually.

10) Always be on the look out for SEO news staying up to date and using the latest techniques will help you stay one step ahead of your competition.

How to Choose an SEO Provider.

Filed Under (SEO Tips) by admin on 22-09-2009

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As the demand for search engine marketing continues to grow, so does the demand for experts in the area. In recent months, mass emails seem to be the new promise of top search engine rankings. How do you choose an SEO provider that will understand the needs of your website and provide quality service?

Lets breakdown the elements of SEO, to make it easier for you to recognize a good product. To find a good SEO provider, look for these things:

They need to be able to check your current site, evaluate it and set goals for it. They should develop a list of target keywords relevant to the site, write and insert good meta tags for you, and check all other tags to make sure that theyre alright. They should also check all your content and make recommendations on how to improve it to get better search engine rankings.

They should provide link-building programs, including writing and submitting listings to directories and giving you ideas on who to ask for links from. Reports tracking search engine referrals to your site are always good, especially if they explain what they mean and how they can be improved.

Website maintenance is a very important aspect of any SEO program. Once their site has been optimized, many people dont realize that they need to keep up these methods over time. If you let your site lapse back to the way it was as you add new content, then youll need to start all over again.

What kind of price can you put on all this? Well, pricing structures for SEO vary a lot between companies. Some companies will charge more because they include a monthly maintenance fee, while other companies offer customized proposals based on a websites specific need. In general, good SEO can cost as much as $150 an hour, so be prepared for that. Keep in mind that the larger your site is, the more work will be involved. It will naturally take less time to optimize a smaller, simpler site, so keep this in mind when you consider the pricing.

After youre more comfortable with what the services offered are and how theyre priced, youll want to make sure that the company youre choosing as your SEO provider has the knowledge and skill to complete the work for you. You should talk to three or four companies before you choose one. Be sure to ask them these questions, and back off if you dont feel like youre getting an honest answer:

1. How long has your company been in business? Can you explain what your previous experience is and what principles your SEO works under?

2. What other services do you provide besides SEO? Do you provide Internet marketing services?

3. What kinds of industries have you serviced previously? Can you provide me with checkable references?

4. How will you break down the cost of your services?

5. How much will I need to do myself for this SEO project to run smoothly?

6. How much time do I need to set aside to communicate with you during the process?

7. How long does it usually take to achieve results? (SEO is a gradual process, so a reply of anything under 6 months should be a red flag for you).

8. Is it possible to have someone from your firm teach us how to maintain your SEO once its done? (If they tell you that you wouldnt be able to do it yourself, then thats another red flag).

When they do send you a proposal on the project, you will want to make sure that it contains everything you spoke about, and everything else that should be there. If the answers to any of these questions are missing, you should walk away:

1. What specific services are included in the contract? Are any omitted? Make sure that what you discussed and wanted is included.

2. What is the name or position of the person you will be working with? Are you dealing with a salesperson, a designer, or someone else?

3. Are allowances made for communication with you? Are there any additional fees for contact?

4. How will the company be providing support? By email? On the phone? Do they stop supporting you after a month or so?

5. Are there extra fees for re-optimization or additional consulting? Is it really necessary? What maintenance is provided? If not, what is the additional cost of it? When maintenance is not included with the plan you need to be careful, as there are people who will charge you exorbitant amounts of money to maintain their optimization.

6. What reports are provided and how often will they provide them?

7. What are the total charges? Are there any additional charges?

By taking steps like this you will guard yourself against bad practices, you will also have a better understanding of the service you are getting, and you can easily compare offers to find the best one. But how can you tell if your provider is operating ethically? Well, thats is pretty easy. Heres a list of the sales pitches that bad SEO providers will use on you. If you hear any of these from a company, use someone else instead.

1. Guaranteeing top-ranking placements. This is impossible to do since the algorithms of the search engines change often, and any good SEO provider will tell you that.

2. Offering a service that includes the development of doorway pages. These designs often dont take your visitors ease of use into consideration, and search engines will ban your site if they catch you using them.

3. Telling you that you need more than one domain name pointing to your website. You can get banned for domain spamming, so dont take the risk.

4. Any company that says it will get thousands of inbound links to your website they will be using free-for-alls, which are very bad for your rankings.

5. Companies that offer you search engine submission software. Good positions always come from hand submission. If they tell you that submission by hand is not the best way to go, dont stick around.

Many SEO providers use unethical spam practices because they are cheap, easy to implement, and do provide very short-term results. Beware of any provider that uses them.

The best way to tell if the providers SEO practices are ethical is to ask: “Do these changes benefit visitors to my site as well making it more search engine friendly?” A good SEO provider will always say yes, as SEO is as much about the users as it is about the engines. After all, whats the point of a high ranking page if its nothing but unusable rubbish that will have people rushing for the Back button?

Dont be overwhelmed by these things, but always be on the look out to make sure that youre getting the best service possible. Good SEO companies can boost your sites traffic without resorting to unethical practices, and keep up with changes in the industry.

How Keywords Affect Your Rankings.

Filed Under (SEO Tips) by admin on 17-09-2009

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We all want to know how keywords affect our rankings, but to find out well need to do a little work. Many say keywords are the key to good search engine rankings, although they arent at all the only factor.

If you need a tool to help you decide on your keywords, try Overture’s Search Term Suggestion Tool it allows you to test your keyword rankings by showing you statistics on recent searches for them. Its a great tool when you have no clue which keyword you should choose, as it can give you a list of terms that were recently searched on.

Keyword Density.

Keyword density refers to the number of the keywords contained within your text relative to the amount of text there is. Preferred keyword density ratios vary between search engines, but you should generally try to keep them between two and eight percent (major search engines prefer the lower end). Keyword analysis tools can help to optimize a web pages keyword density. These tools are good if youre not sure of what youre doing, as theyre very intuitive and explain things as you go.

Counting the Keywords.

Many SEO experts will tell you that the keyword density of your text isnt a very important factor, and that you should be careful not to overdo it. So is there a limit? How many times should you use your keywords? SEO experts wont be able to answer these questions for you, because no-ones really sure of the answer. The best answer is that it changes regularly, and you can never be sure you have to experiment to see what works for you.

Location of Keywords.

When testing the effects of keyword location, we found that pages with the keywords at the top and bottom of the page ranked higher on Google than pages with the keywords in the middle.

Many other search engines also give keywords more or less weight based on their location, but keep in mind that each search engines algorithm is different. Heres a list of how most search engines prioritize keyword positions, from most to least:

1. Domain name.

2. Page title.

3. Headings (i.e. H1, H2, etc.).

4. Body text (the first 2 to 3 KB usually counts more).

5. Meta tags (especially description).

6. Links (including keywords in the URL or link text of links to you).

7. Alt text (the alt descriptions for your pictures).

Really, though, keyword density is one of those areas where youll have trouble on your hands if you try to second guess the search engines. Be cautious.

The Importance of Search Engines

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

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It is the search engines that finally bring your website to the notice of the prospective customers. When a topic is typed for search, nearly instantly, the search engine will sift through the millions of pages it has indexed about and present you with ones that match your topic. The searched matches are also ranked, so that the most relevant ones come first.

Remember that a prospective customer will probably only look at the first 2-3 listings in the search results. So it does matter where your website appears in the search engine ranking.

Further, they all use one of the top 6-7 search engines and these search engines attract more visitors to websites than anything else. So finally it all depends on which search engines the customers use and how they rank your site.

It is the Keywords that play an important role than any expensive online or offline advertising of your website.

It is found by surveys that a when customers want to find a website for information or to buy a product or service, they find their site in one of the following ways:
The first option is they find their site through a search engine.
Secondly they find their site by clicking on a link from another website or page that relates to the topic in which they are interested.
Occasionally, they find a site by hearing about it from a friend or reading in an article.

Thus its obvious the the most popular way to find a site, by search engine, represents more than 90% of online users. In other words, only 10% of the people looking for a website will use methods other than search engines.

All search engines employ a ranking algorithm and one of the main rules in a ranking algorithm is to check the location and frequency of keywords on a web page. Dont forget that algorithms also give weightage to link population (number of web pages linking to your site). When performed by a qualified, experienced search engine optimization consultant, your site for high search engine rankings really does work, unless you have a lot of money and can afford to pay the expert. With better knowledge of search engines and how they work, you can also do it on your own.

SEO: For Search Engines or Humans

Filed Under (Free SEO) by admin on 12-09-2009

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SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is something that many webmasters are now obsessing over. Many web site owners are spending countless hours tweaking and modifying their web sites, adding keyword rich content, and spending hours obtaining back links, so that their site will rank higher in search engines. It is true that over 90% of all web surfers use search engines to visit sites on a regular basis, but should web masters and web site designers build and tweak sites for search engines, or for their visitors?

The answer to this question is that when you build a web site, you are not targeting web search engine crawlers, you are targeting people and human visitors. Hence, you should build a web site for humans, not search engines. The whole purpose to create a web site is so that you can get traffic. Without traffic, a web site is worthless. No matter how many features and how functional your site is, without traffic, your design and functionality do not matter. Although search engines can help bring in traffic, web sites that are designed for search engines, are often not designed for human visitors and all the traffic that your web site gets will be worthless. Visitors will visit and then soon leave your web site and not return again. Return visitors are critical for the success of any web site.

One good example of optimizing for search engines purely is some webmasters tend to stuff tons of keywords into the Meta-Tags; this is a very bad practice and will get the site blacklisted. Moreover, this black hat technique does not benefit the users.

Hence, when building a web site, one should build it for human visitors. If you have articles that are too keyword dense, the quality of the writing will not be as high as it should, and quite frankly, many of your visitors will be annoyed if you keep using words such as mesothelioma or home insurance loan to get your web site high in the search rankings for these terms. They will leave your web site and most likely not return. If you create a web site where content is created for people to read and is well written, chances are you will get many return visitors who like the quality of the content you provide and come back frequently to read any new content you may have added. The more people that visit and link to your web site, the more popular it well become and naturally, it will be ranked higher in search engines.

Also, rather than spending hours building links for SEO purposes, that time could be better spent on adding features to your web site which would prompt more people to return to your site and stay at your web site for a longer period of time.

In conclusion, although spending lot of time on SEO and increasing your search engine rankings in the short run, the visitors you get from your SEO efforts will not be valuable as chances are they will not visit again. If you build your web sites for people, your traffic will grow and search engine rankings will rise naturally. Hence, the best way to build a successful web site is to build for people and allow your web site to naturally move up search engine rankings.