Archive | October, 2009

Search Engine Optimization Tips and Techniques

Search Engine Optimization is a process which provides improved, preferential positioning in major search engines and directories, including Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Many companies feel that to get onto page one is next to impossible and that search engine optimization is a mystery. Search Engine Optimization is something that everyone talks about but few people really understand. Search engine optimization is just a matter of understanding what search engines look for when they visit your site. Organic or Natural Search Engine OptimizationOrganic or natural search engine optimization is the process of a comprehensive analysis of keywords and phrases and the implementation of ethical programming techniques for optimal natural (non-sponsored) placement in search engine results. The option of adWords is very good to a certain point and in general the Search Engine Optimization is the tool that gives the ROI for a long time for each website.

The world wide web is a highly competitive market. Companies vie for the attention of billions of internet users in the search for better revenue. A lynch pin to the internet marketing war is the search engine.

Search engines are internet venues where billions of people congregate to search for information. The most prominent search engine giants are Google and Yahoo. The kind of traffic these dot-com companies receive per hour is phenomenal.

So naturally, companies would gravitate towards placing their links and sites in an attempt to garner more visits to their web sites.

In order to maximize ranking and placement, companies have used tools such as search engine optimization or SEO. Search engine optimization is the method or process of improving a web site’s ranking in a search engine listing.

Legitimate search engine optimization practices focus on the improvement of a page’s ranking in the search engine list by improving site content, usability and using legitimate methos of promotion through web phenomena such as viral marketing.

Search engines all use complex algorithms in keeping their relevancy in the web and to keep illegal and abusive search engine optimization methods from prospering. However, “black hat” SEO users will always be around so it is expected that search engine giant such as Google and Yahoo will continue to make more complex algorithms to filter the garbage out.

Organic searches are searches conducted by web users in a search engine that is free from solicitations. A study from Jupiter Media stated that 5 out of 6 commercial online purchases came from organic searches versus paid online ads.

This has made SEO much more in demand in creating revenue for companies as SEO is not a paid ad but a method of intrinsically improving content.

Here are a few tips on improving content for a much more improved result in organic searches:

1. Expertise. Follow your strengths. Sites you set up must be on subject you consider yourself an expert on. People can smell an amateur a mile away.

2. Plan the site. A good layout for the site can improve usability. This in turn will not unnecessarily aggravate the browser.

3. Research. Check out the competition and see what they have set up. See what works and what does not. If possible try to communicate with users in forums and get feedback on what should or can be improved further.

4. Decide on important keywords. Decide on the most important keywords to use for your sight. Include these keywords in the metatags, copy page, page title, and file names.

5. The Search Engine is your friend. Make friends with your search engine and don’t give it a hard time. Being nice and friendly to it will make its job easier to serve your site up to your target audience.

6. Focus. Focus on the topic at hand and nothing else. The rule is one topic per page.

7. Join the directories. Directories are repositories of knowledge done by human hands while search engine are huge databases collected by mostly machine methods. The relevancy of your page when joining the right directory may shoot through the roof. Of course, make sure you know what you are talking about.

8. Start a linking campaign. A most effective SEO method. This is a must to do. Ask your allies, strategic partners, friends and acquaintances to place your site’s URL link on their sites. With a short description this can draw traffic from other sites and increase exposure. Google especially ranks the importance of its sites by the number of sites linked to it.

9. Repetition is the key to victory. Keep repeating the above tips, supporting and increasing what works and killing what does not as fast as possible until the desired result is achieved.

In the world of search engine optimization, content matters a lot. If a site has amateur or worse falsified information, fewer and fewer browsers will want to visit it. They will even spread bad news faster than good news so expect a garbage site to be ignored even in a week’s time.

A company mostly relies on its official web site to build a reliable customer base, to interact and get feedback from customers, and to use the site for advertising purposes.

With search engine optimization, some techniques are employed so that a web site will be listed on top of the list of results when a user types in a keyword by going to Google, Yahoo, MSN, or other search engines.

Emerging on top of a search list would lead more business your way that is why search engine optimization or SEO tactics are employed.

Some companies employ the services of establishments or individuals who deal with search engine optimization.

This would involve the development of a more informative and user-friendly web site. It may also include pay-per-click or adwords services, such as the one offered by Google.

Another thing that can yield positive results at a lower cost, as compared to an adword campaign, is optimizing a web site for organic search.

This would mainly require keyword density which would result to more traffic going to your web site.

In effect, you will have an added clientele and this should lead more business your way.

If you would like to have a hands-on experience with search engine optimization and you would not like to get a third-party SEO service provider, there are some techniques which are easy to learn so that you can do it yourself. Take a look at the following:

1. Take a lot of time with developing your web site’s content.

For most web sites, content is the key. When writing the content of your web pages, insert vital keywords which relate to the products and services that your company offers.

Make it brief and concise, yet informative.

You might see that Internet users do not actually read a web site’s content word-for-word.

They just skim through the text and concentrate on the articles that they need and the data which they find interesting. A 600-word article may be too boring or too long for a user to read.

Keep your facts up-to-date so that users will visit your web site more often. Do not forget toinclude a lot of helpful links, articles and guides that users can forward to another user and add to your customer base.

2. Make the overall design user friendly.

In most cases, the rule the simpler, the better applies. Do not design your web site in an overly-complicated way that users will find it too “frightening” to browse through.

Adapt the design to your target market. If your target audience is of a younger age, make sure that the colors and designs are funky, youthful and attention-grabbing.

For a more mature audience, you can use subdued colors and have a more elegant theme and overall web site design.

3. Vary the keyword for each individual web page.

Think of every possible keywords or phrases that will apply to your products and services.

Each user is different and may not necessarily use the keyword that you expect them to type in the search bar. Search engines offer tools which will guide you through finding the correct keywords for search engine optimization.

4. Make sure that your hyper links are visible, accessible and informative.

Providing users with hyperlinks or HTML links which are useful and easy to find is yet another way to optimize your web site.

5. Learn how to lead traffic to your site.

Seek the advise of experts on this field if you do not know how to lead traffic to your site. Develop a plan and learn how to use the necessary tools pull traffic your way.

Gather all the statistical data that you can use to keep your web site on top of the search engines’ list.

Vary your web site’s contents and keywords to adapt to the current trend. If there is a particular word or phrase that you have not used when searching for keywords, use it instead to lead more traffic your way.

Be flexible enough to change the web site’s contents and fulfill the ever-changing needs of the online users.

All in all, you would have your work cut out for you if you want to employ do-it-yourself search engine optimization techniques.

By: John DeLellis

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What is the significance of keyword effectiveness index in search engine optimization ?

vijay a asked:

Is it right to select the keyword which has got high keyword effectiveness index for search engine optimization ?

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Basic Organic Search Engine Optimization Defined

There is a lot of talk nowadays about Search Engine Optimization, but not so much about Organic Search Engine Optimization itself. So what exactly is Organic Search Engine Optimization?

Organic Search Engine Optimization is just like ordinary Search Engine Optimization in that it is the process of optimizing the design of your website so that search results using keywords in search engines will rank your website higher in the non-paid listings. Organic Search Engine Optimization (also called Natural Search Engine Optimization) however, also has a slight difference from ordinary Search Engine Optimization in certain aspects but the main focus is to work towards getting the best ranking in Natural or Organic search results (SERPs).

For instance, Organic Search Engine Optimization requires your SEO team to evaluate your website thoroughly to see how best to optimize your website’s potential. The SEO team will then try to identify any technical issues which can bar your site from being indexed properly during the Organic Search Engine Optimization process.

Organic Search Engine Optimization also requires detailed keyword analysis to be done so your Organic Search Engine Optimization team can produce a list of appropriate keywords and phrases that can be used for your website. Keyword analysis should require real information about the function, products and services offered at your website, stay aligned with your goals for marketing your website, and try to get the best Organic Search Engine Optimization impact on the search engines and end users. Some Organic Search Engine Optimization specialists will give you a list of target keywords and phrases that have been ranked as to how popularly use each is by Internet searchers.

It has been found that to get the best search engine rankings, Organic Search Engine Optimization should rely on effective and efficient organization of the website, with content selected by your Organic Search Engine Optimization team so that keywords and phrases will not look ridiculous when used in the website content. Organic SEO starts with selecting the right Title and Meta tags, creation of on-page text with emphasis on content and layout, and then followed by insertion of internal links of the various web pages of your website. If these are followed by your Organic Search Engine Optimization team, keyword relevance and correct page formatting will increase.

Organic Search Engine Optimization also requires manual submissions of your website to directories and search engines. This helps assure you – the client – that Organic Search Engine Optimization will meet the special demands, regulations, and legal requirements of every search engine that is contacted by your Organic Search Engine Optimization

team.

Your Organic Search Engine Optimization team must rely on ethical link building techniques, not only to safeguard the security of your search engine rankings but also to allow your website descriptions to be placed under the right directory categories. Ethical Organic Search Engine Optimization link building will also help your website use only the correct resource web sites.

Does Organic Search Engine Optimization end here? Actually, no, your Organic Search Engine Optimization team must constantly track search engine submissions so that they can tweak and amend your website if needed to provide the best results for you. Organic Search Engine Optimization also requires that the team document their monitoring activities so you yourself know what is happening all the time.

It would be helpful if your Organic SEO team can track the numbers of visitors your site generates, to make it more convenient for you. After all, you need to concentrate on running your organization and/or business so Organic Search Engine Optimization should be a separate endeavor that others should do for you.

Otherwise, why outsource this function?

Organic Search Engine Optimization aims to help you bring in more visitors than you were getting before, so that your potential sales will be maximized in the process. But you need to avoid illicit practices and favor Organic Search Engine Optimization more because:

1) illicit marketing practices do not reflect well on you or the SEO team you hired.

2) Organic Search Engine Optimization does work when used the right way.

3) Organic Search Engine Optimization does not harm the search engine you will submit your website to, so you have a favorable image with search engines in general, and

4) Organic Search Engine Optimization is part of the use of best practices that have been accepted by most of the Internet world nowadays.

How then do you find an Organic Search Engine Optimization team that you can work with? One way is to look for SEO industry data about who are the best Organic SEO players currently operating online. Examine the background of the company, and pay close attention to who they cite as their satisfied clients. You might want to contact these clients yourself discreetly so you can inquire into their Organic Search Engine Optimization experience with that SEO player. Another way is to ask people you know who have used Organic Search Engine Optimization themselves. Sometimes, the best way to get proper service is through ordinary word-of-mouth advertising from people you trust.

By: Moe Tamani

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What a Search Engine Optimization Firm Does

Before going into what a Search Engine Optimization firm does, let us first define what “search engine optimization” or SEO is. In “brick-and-mortar” terms, SEO may be compared to placing an advertisement in a medium that caters largely to a particular market segment, e.g., medical journals, fashion magazines, adult cable channels, etc. so that there is a high probability that whatever products or services you offer is what that particular viewing, reading, or listening market segment needs. The “agent” for this type of advertising is the advertising or marketing firm which, when related to cyberspace is the Search Engine Optimization firm.

SEO is the set of activities and strategies implemented (either by yourself or through a Search Engine Optimization firm) that influences a search engine’s “spiderbot” to give your website a high relevance rating which translates into a high ranking in the list of keyword relevant websites. Since it is a targeted approach, the success rate of an SEO strategy (measured in terms of average business per visitor also known as conversion rate) that a Search Engine Optimization firm implements should be higher than, say, online advertising (which may attract more visitors but will include a big share of “just looking” hits, thus resulting to a lower average business per visitor). This ultimately results to lower cost per sale since the resources required to service the visits (which will go down in terms of quantity but increase in terms of quality) goes down.

What does a Search Engine Optimization firm do in order to achieve its objective of ethically optimizing your website? One Search Engine Optimization firm may apply a different set of SEO strategies versus another Search Engine Optimization firm, but they both focus on one aspect: the search engine keyword or keywords. Essentially, the keyword is the major rating criterion of a relevance rating; i.e., how often it appears in the website or content. Although more sophisticated discernment algorithms are being implemented by the search engine’s “spiderbot” to weed out unethical practices (e.g., embedding keywords in articles or content that do not have any logical connection), the keyword density still the key.

Some of the strategies that a Search Engine Optimization firm employs are as follows:

• Keyword Rich Domain Names

This is the most “no brainer” strategy that a Search Engine Optimization firm could employ, yet is one of the most difficult to implement. The proposition of this strategy is that the best way to get a high ranking for a keyword relevant site is to embed the keyword into the domain name. For example, www.recipes.com will obviously get top ranking when the keyword “recipes” is used in the search box (as a side note, if you are looking for recipes, you might even just skip the search engine altogether and instinctively enter www.recipes.com). The problem with this strategy, of course, is that these domain names are probably owned by someone else already, in which case, the Search Engine Optimization firm could embed the keyword in a longer domain name like, e.g., www.mothers-recipes.com or www.home-cooked-meal-recipes.com, which, when combined with other SEO strategies could potentially even outrank www.recipes.com.

• Content Optimization

In this strategy, the Search Engine Optimization firm ensures that the content is ethically filled with all the relevant keywords to which the website is responsive to. This is accomplished by framing the advertising copy around the keyword and making it appear as many times as relevancy allows, including the keywords in the text articles, etc. The Search Engine Optimization firm has several ways of determining the possible relevance rank of your website based on the level of content optimization.

• Meta-Tag Optimization

All websites use HTML in several parts of the website’s program. In the body of the HTML program are areas that the programmer uses, among other things, for remarks (e.g., to remind him what the code is all about). The content of these areas (called meta-tags) do not have an impact on how the website looks but is “crawled through” by the search engine’s “spiderbot” all the same. Because these meta-tags play a factor in the website’s relevance, a Search Engine Optimization firm will normally embed as many keywords as ethically allowed to into them.

In selecting the Search Engine Optimization firm that you will use to optimize your website, be sure to put a heavy premium on its experience and reputation. Also, avoid a Search Engine Optimization firm that engages in unethical (and illegal) practices just to increase the number of visitors to your sites. Avoid a Search Engine Optimization firm that is vague about how it is going to optimize your website. If it has nothing to hide, then it should be transparent as to what it is supposed to do. If you heard about a Search Engine Optimization firm through spam mail, do not even consider it. If the Search Engine Optimization firm charges you a low price without any clear specifics as to what it will do, walk away. Finally, make sure to canvass your requirements before selecting the Search Engine Optimization firm you will use.

By: Moe Tamani

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How can I learn about search engine optimization for my physical therapy clinic website?

Ron C asked:

I want to drive more traffic to my website which is purely informational. I need to do it cheaply. Any ideas?
I was really hoping for something specific about how to drive traffic to a website for a local business. I could care less if someone in South Dakota visits my website. My business is in southern California. Until they are a patient needing physical therapy living near one of my offices in Orange County, they do not count because they will not come into my office three days a week for four weeks to get physical therapy.

Maybe I don’t get it, but much of what I have read so far does not seem to fit my situation. Does anyone have any specific answers?

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Which free search engine optimization software allows you publish your site without ftp?

michemer asked:

Which free search engine optimization software allows you to publish your site without ftp?

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SEnuke

drdarien777 asked:

This software will help you find profitable niches, deterimine your competition, find high paying affiliate products and most importantly senuke will let you dominate up to three pages of Google listings for your niche. www.seo-bomb.com

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Is search engine optimization a possible career?

dancergalny asked:

I work for a marketing firm who specializes in website that have been optimized for search engines. I am thinking of becoming an exclusive ‘search engine optimizer’ but am wondering if this is too broad of a category. Can one specialize in this and make a decent living? Thank you to anyone who answers with good advice!

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SEnuke – Ultimate SEO Tool

dmmccarthy4 asked:

Click the link below to buy or try senuke. tinyurl.com

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Most Important Thing for Website-search Engine Optimization

With this context in mind, many people are continuously struggling to get noticed in the world of the Internet. Websites are growing like mushrooms everywhere, every time. How can one’s website get past the millions of other websites and eventually be noticed by its target audience?

Search engine optimization aims to achieve the goal of getting more visitors to a website by helping it get higher rankings in the search engines. This simply means that search engine optimization’s goal is to make a website appear on the first pages, if not the first page of a search done through the search engine.

There are two ways to be able to get noticed by search engines. One is through pay-per-click-advertisements. A good example of a pay-per-click system that is employed by search engines is the Google Ad words system. It has created a hype and has given Google around 5 billion dollars in terms of revenue per year. Webmasters can place their bids to be shown when a keyword is searched by a surfer. The highest bidders will get their sites to appear first when the search is being done.

The second way of getting high rankings from search engines is through organic searches. Search engines evaluate websites by using what they call “spiders.” These programs scan the websites and collects information about them. They then collate the information and pass it on to the search engine. This area is primarily the main arena of search engine optimization. It utilizes a set of methods to be able to get search engines to list the website on high ranks.

Traffic

The main purpose of search engine optimization is to increase the traffic generated by a website. Websites are built to be seen by Internet surfers and search engines can help it achieve this goal.

The power of the search engine should not be underestimated. It is one of the building blocks of the foundation of the Internet. A survey showed that 90% of all Internet users employ search engines to aid them in their Internet-related activities. Google, the dominant player in the search engine industry, generates 70% of all search-related Internet activity.

People and Search Engines are alike

Search engines behave like people. They like websites which contain substantive information about a certain topic. The best sites usually appear first in search engines because people like them as well as the search engines.

Search engine optimization does not only generate traffic, it helps maintain the traffic. The behavior of the search engine is indicative to the behavior of the people who visit the website. Search engine optimization leads to the optimization of a webpage or a website. It will lead to a website which is more organized and a website which contains substantive information.

Target Audience

The use of the search engine to be able to target one’s target audience is one of the most effective Internet marketing strategies. It is not like other on-line marketing techniques (such as email marketing) which can lead to a lot of leakages in terms of targeting the right audience.

Search engines segment the market and connect the right people together. People search for topics which they are interested in and this is the main strength of search engines in connecting markets together.

Cost Effectiveness

One can do search engine optimization under the assumption that he knows what he is doing. Search engine optimization is a full-time job and has a very long learning curve. This is why most people would resort to out-sourcing the job to experts who are good at what they do. One of the best SEO company I will like to recommend is www.website-control.co.uk . Search engine optimization is a very cost effective way of getting more people to know about one’s products or to know about a certain issue or event that a website is disseminating.

SEO is very important for websites since it determines the position of the website in comparison with its competitors. It does not only generate traffic from the targeted audience but is also a cost-effective way of optimizing the website.

By: Jayesh

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