SEO TIPS SEO LEARNING TIPS LEARNING SEO TIPS

SEO TIPS LEARNING SEO TIPS

2008-12-31T00:10:00.000-08:00

SEO Learning is an important thing for any webmaster.The SEO tips presented here are intended as a guide for webmasters who have only recently become aware of search engine optimization (seo). To use my SEO tips, you need not to be a technical wizard. These seo tips also include many search engine optimization techniques for more experienced web site designers as well as new seo web masters.

You can do your own basic search engine optimization, using my SEO tips as your guide. I have filled all the pages in the blog with easy-to-follow seo (search engine optimization) tips. If, after you've read all my search engine optimization (SEO) tips, you would like to have some experience on how to do SEO for your web site. Everyone loves good seo tips.

The following are some of the best, quick and good seo tips.

Content is king : You must have more original content and fresh content

Quality backlinks : Build a network of quality backlinks

PageRank is must but don’t be obsessed with PageRank

Design your web site without considering SEO.

When doing keyword analysis, do not focus on single keywords, focus on key phrases.

On every page of your site, you must use unique, keyword focused Title tag.

Site Map will help visitors and crawlers find what you have to offer.

When coming to blog posts optimization, your post title tag must be independent from your blog title.

The above are some of SEO Tips easy to follow.

By following the above search engine optimization (SEO) tips, you will do your own SEO for your site.

For Latest SEO Tips and Tricks, feel free to visit Good SEO Tips.

SEO - Basic Introduction of SEO ( Search Engine Optimization )

2008-12-15T21:12:00.000-08:00

What is "SEO"?

Search engine optimization (SEO also search optimization) is the process of editing and organizing the content on a webpage or across a website to increase its potential relevance to specific keywords on specific search engines.

(OR)

SEO can also be defined as follows

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results.

This is done with the aim of achieving a higher organic search listing and thus increasing the volume of traffic from search engines.

The main use of SEO is

SEO helps to ensure that a site is accessible to a search engine and improves the chances that the site will be found by the search engine.

So, SEO main purpose is to get good ranking through Search Engines to a website.

Search engines are one of the primary ways that Internet users find web sites. That's why a web site with good search engine listings may see a dramatic increase in traffic. For this we have to do the entire SEO work.

Everyone wants those good listings. Unfortunately, many web sites appear poorly in search engine rankings or may not be listed at all because they fail to consider how search engines work. If you know the SEO and apply SEO for your site, then your site will easily get good search engine listings.

SEO Learning Tips for keyword placement in your website or blog

2008-12-11T03:27:00.000-08:00

Keyword research and identification is a major factor in their optimization strategies. But if we don’t know where we have to place keywords in our website, then the whole work is a useless. So we should know where we have to place keywords in a website.

The following are some of the seo learning tips for placing keywords in our website.

Keywords in Title Tag:

The title tag is the best place to add your targeted keywords. The title tag should not be more than 5 or 6 words. Mostly 0 to 75 characters are preferable for any Title Tag. Your targeted keyword must appear at the beginning of your Title Tag.

Keywords in Heading Tag:

Adding Keywords in Heading Tag is another added advantage for a website or a blog. Make sure that your targeted keyword should appear in your Heading Tag for better results.

Keywords in Meta Tags:

Meta Tags are not much important for Google, but Yahoo, Msn and other search engines like Meta Tags also. So it is a good idea to place some keywords in Meta tags also.

Keywords in Alt Tags:

Search Engines doesn’t read images. Use some targeted keywords in your alt tags. But don’t stuff the alt tags with too many keywords. Search Engines considers that as spam.

Keywords in your Content:

Content is the king of any website. Try to write as much good and fresh content as possible. Make sure that your targeted keywords must appear in your content without repeating too many keywords. It is preferable to use 3 to 5 % of keyword density in your content.

The above are some of the best seo learning tips for keyword placement in your website or blog.

Benefits of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

2008-11-21T03:07:00.000-08:00

Search engines generate nearly 90% of Internet traffic and are responsible for 55% of e-commerce transactions. Search Engine Promotion has shown to deliver the highest ROI, compared to any other type of marketing, both online and offline. Search engines bring motivated buyers to you and hence contribute to increased sales conversions.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) offers an affordable entry point for marketing your website and an effective way to promote your business online. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) makes for a long-term solution is your access to sustained free traffic and a source of building brand name and company reputation.

Benefits of seo

Improves ranking among unpaid search engine listings.
Rank high in the search engines
Helps potential customers or clients to find the website
Drives more traffic to the site
Gain top positions on search engines for various keywords
Increases the Website’s performance on the search engines in organic and natural means.

Keyword Proximity and Keyword weight

2008-11-20T01:51:00.000-08:00

Keyword Proximity

Keyword proximity refers to the closeness between two or more keywords. In general, the closer the keywords are, the better.

For example:

How Keyword Density Affects Search Engine Rankings

How Keyword Density Affects Rankings In Search Engine

Using the example above, if someone searched for "search engine rankings," a web page containing the first sentence is more likely to rank higher than the second.

The reason is because the keywords are placed closer together. This is assuming that everything else is equal, of course.

Keyword weight

Keyword weight is the percentage or concentration of keywords on your page in relation to all other words on the page. A "keyword" can be either a single word, or a short phrase.

Keyword weight refers to the number of keywords appearing in the page area divided by the total number of words appearing in that area. Weight also depends on whether the keyword is a single word or a multi-word phrase.

Keyword Frequency and Keyword Prominence

2008-11-19T22:43:00.000-08:00

Keyword Frequency

Keyword frequency refers to the number of times a keyword or keyword phrase appears within a web page.

The theory is that the more times a keyword or keyword phrase appears within a web page, the more relevance a search engine is likely to give the page for a search with those keywords.

In general, I recommend that you ensure that the most important keyword or keyword phrase is the most frequently use keywords in a web page.

But be careful not to abuse the system by repeating the same keyword or keyword phrases over and over again.

Keyword Prominence

Keyword prominence refers to how prominent keywords are within a web page.

The general recommendation is to place important keywords at, or near, the start of a web page, sentence, TITLE or META tag.

SEO vs SEO 2.0 Comparison

2008-11-19T02:38:00.000-08:00

SEO	SEO 2.0
Un-Natural Linking: Gain backlinking by submitting to directories, link buying, and manually adding links from requests. Optimized for links.	Natural Linking: Gaining links through socializing, blogs, forums, automatic linking with our seo 2.o search exchange community. Optimized for traffic and sales conversions.
Quantity: by keyword stuffing and repetitive titles and descriptions, Designed for the search engine spiders in mind. Optimized for keywords	Quality: by making things completely unique using LSI content structure with no keyword stuffing. Designed with not only the search engines but focusing on the human viewer. Optimized for tags.
Competition: webmaster fight each other trying to gain the best advantages to gain top 10 positions	Cooperation: Web master help each other by linking to one another and build into a strong community so they each get better rankings.
Introverted: We’re not doing SEO, no we can’t show you our client lists so don’t ask, secretive SEO companies	Extraverted: Welcome our newest client “company X”, we are glad they decided to join our family.
Optimization: clicks, page views, visits	Innovation: sales conversions, ROI, company branding
Link Structure: Inbound links to the home page only. Links from the home page to the interior pages.	Link Infrastructure: Inbound links to all pages. Links form interior pages out to the home page.
Non-Authoritative: Building your site from the top down. Putting all your emphasis on your home page.	Authoritative: Building your site from the bottom up. Making each page just as important as the home page.
On-Page Optimization: Cleaning up code, adding keywords, and writing content.	Off-Page Optimization: Gaining links, joining networks, social bookmarking, and exchanging links.

SEO vs SEO 2.0: Top 15 Differences

2008-11-19T02:32:00.000-08:00

The below are some of the differences between SEO and SEO 2.0

SEO	SEO 2.0
Link building, manually adding them, submitting static websites to directories, link exchange, paying for links	Getting links, enhancing it by certain actions like blogging, writing pillar content, creating link bait, socializing
On site optimization for spiders: example repetitive page titles concentrating (solely) on keywords	On site optimization for users. Example: Kick ass post titles
Competition: You compete with others to be on the first page/in the Google top 10 for keywords	Cooperation: You cooperate with each other submitting fellow bloggers to social media or voting for them, you link to them
Barter: You give me link and only then I will give you one	Giving: I link you regardless whether you link back, but in most cases you will, more than once
Hiding: We’re not doing SEO, we can’t show our client list publicly, impersonal SEO company	Being open: Welcome our new client xyz, we are proud to work together with them, Rand Fishkin and his team
keywords	tags
Optimization for links	Optimization for traffic
clicks, page views, visits	conversions, ROI, branding
DMOZ	del.icio.us
Main traffic sources: Google, Yahoo, MSN	Main traffic sources: Stumble Upon, Niche social news sites, Blogs
one way communication	dialog, conversation
top down	bottom up
undemocratic, who pays most is on top	democratic, who responds to popular demand is on top
50% automated	10% automated
technocratic	emotional

Keyword Density

2008-11-07T21:33:00.000-08:00

Keyword density is the density of a particular keyword, or set of keywords, located on an individual webpage. It is a measure of how many times a keyword is repeated and compared to the overall content of a web page. If a keyword was listed 5 times out of a word count of 50 the keyword density would be 10%.If repeated too often though, it could lead to the page being penalized for spamming.

(or)

Keyword density refers to the ratio (percentage) of keywords contained within the total number of indexable words within a web page.

The preferred keyword density ratio varies from search engine to search engine. In general, I recommend using a keyword density ratio in the range of 2-8%.

Some of the Keyword Density Checker tools are as follows.

http://www.keyworddensity.com/

http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-density/

http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword-density/

http://www.iwebtool.com/keyword_density

http://www.webconfs.com/keyword-density-checker.php

Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI )

2008-11-07T03:33:00.000-08:00

The Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI ) is a measure of how effective a keyword is for your web site. The derivation of the formula for KEI is based on three axioms:

The Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI ) for a keyword should increase if its popularity increases. Popularity is defined as the number present in the "Count" column of Word Tracker. This axiom is self-explanatory
The Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI ) for a keyword should decrease if it becomes more competitive. Competitiveness is defined as the number of sites which AltaVista displays when you search for that keyword using exact match search (i.e. you should use quotes around the keyword). This axiom is also self-explanatory.
If a keyword becomes more popular and more competitive at the same time such that the ratio between its popularity and competitiveness remains the same, its KEI should increase. The rationale behind this axiom requires a more detailed explanation. The best way to do this is to take an example:

Suppose the popularity of a keyword is 4 and AltaVista displays 100 sites for that keyword. Then the ratio between popularity and competitiveness for that keyword is 4/100 = 0.04.

Suppose that both the popularity and the competitiveness of the keyword increase. Assume that the popularity increases to 40 and AltaVista now displays 1000 sites for that keyword. Then the ratio between popularity and competitiveness for that keyword is 40/1000 = 0.04.

Hence, the keyword has the same ratio between popularity and competitiveness as before. However, as is obvious, the keyword would be far more attractive in the second case. If the popularity is only 4, there's hardly any point in spending time trying to optimize your site for it even though you have a bigger chance of ending up in the top 30 since there are only 100 sites which are competing for a top 30 position. Each hit is no doubt important, but from a cost-benefit angle, the keyword is hardly a good choice. However, when the popularity increases to 40, the keyword becomes more attractive even though its competitiveness increases. Although it is now that much more difficult to get a top 30 ranking, spending time in trying to do so is worthwhile from the cost benefit viewpoint.

A good Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI ) must satisfy all the 3 axioms. Let P denote the popularity of the keyword and C the competitiveness.
The formula that I have chosen is KEI = P^2/C, i.e. KEI is the square of the popularity of the keyword divided by its competitiveness. This formula satisfies all the 3 axioms:

If P increases, P^2 increases and hence KEI increases. Hence, Axiom 1 is satisfied.
If C increases, KEI decreases and hence, Axiom 2 is satisfied.
If P and C both increase such that P/C is the same as before, KEI increases since KEI can be written as KEI = P^2/C = P/C * P. Since P/C remains the same, and P increases, KEI must increase. Hence, Axiom 3 is satisfied.

Five Steps for Search Engine Optimization Success

2008-11-06T02:16:00.000-08:00

SEO can be daunting. It’s an ongoing process that may not yield fast results, and there’s no way to guarantee specific ranking for your site. Here are five steps will simplify the process:

Review objectives and goals: Why do you want more search engine visibility? Are you trying to increase sales, gain leads, increase readership of your newsletter, and encourage visitors to use a store locator to find your physical locations or boost site traffic to increase advertising revenue?
Monitor the competition: Search engine marketing uniquely allows you to check out your competitor. If you have a gardening website, you can type “gardening” (and related terms such as “gardens,” “flowers” and “lawn care”) into the major search engines—Google, Yahoo, and MSN—and see your competition, which may surprise you. If you’re selling gardening products, you might assume your competitors are other retailers, but in search engines, you are also competing with news sites, personal websites from gardening enthusiasts and reference guides. Any sites that use your key words now count as your competition.
Research keywords: Studying the keywords your consumers use to find you and your competitors tells you how your customers think. Consider the words consumers use to find you and the words you want to be associated with.
Measure results: You can monitor your site traffic by keyword. Establishing current benchmarks allows you to see changes over time. Google offers a free Analytic tool, or you can invest in a more sophisticated system such as, Omniture.com,Coremetrics.com, WebTrends.com
Launch the program: Depending on the number of pages on your site, the goals you want to accomplish, and how well your site is already optimized, this can involve a few quick fixes or a lengthy, labor-intensive process. There are three main components to SEO

=>Technical changes: (e.g., update page titles to reflect the key you selected and design pages so search engines can easily read them)
=> Gain more links to your site:(such as from affiliates, partners, blogs, and other sources => Update the content on your site to reflect how you want search engines and consumers to see you: (e.g. adding richer product descriptions, posting article and reference materials, and encouraging consumers to submit) their own content

Uses of Blogs

2008-11-05T02:32:00.000-08:00

Some of the Uses of Blogs are as follows:

Blogs build regular readership traffic.
Blogs are designed to publish and update contents easily once you have them set up, configured and running.
You can make money with your niche blogs in many ways, such

=> Publishing third party adds in your blogs ( eg. Google Adsense Publishing)
=> Recommending affiliate products and services in your blogs (eg.Amazon)

Unlike websites, blogs are interactive. Visitors, or blog readers,are usually allowed to post comments for a blog post (or article) to the blog owner.

Since blogs are usually updated regularly via blog posts and pages, blogs will rank higher in search engines as compared to websites.

Some of the Best SEO Learning Tips

2008-11-04T02:38:00.000-08:00

Know your geographic market and ensure your domain has the correct TLD.

If your primary market is the UK it is important to use a .UK TLD and ideally have your domain hosted on UK based servers.

Include keyword in Domain name

Try to include keyword in your domain name. This may also show best results.

Create as much content about subject as you can.

Create as much good content as you can with keyword stuff. After that divide this into some 3 or 4 sections.

Find the Best Keywords

You should invest some energy into finding the best keywords. There are several SEO tools available on the Internet to help you find the best keywords. Tip: Don't be deceived by organizations that require you to register first. The two most popular resources are WordTracker and KeywordDiscovery.com.

Use your keywords as anchor text when linking internally

Anchor text helps tells spiders what the linked-to page is about. Links that say “click here” do nothing for your search engine visibility.

Your Website Title must be relevant

The title of your website must be relevant to the content on the site. Since Google only displays the first 66 or so characters, so keep the title length under 66 characters.

Optimize Your META Tags

META tags are hidden code read only by search engine webcrawlers (also called spiders). They live within the HEAD section of a web page.

The META tags you need to be the most concerned about are:

1. Description

2. Keywords

The length of these Meta tags mostly used is “0 to 250 “characters.

For keywords we have to use up to 1250 characters. But “0 to 250 characters” is mostly preferable.

Some of the Uses of Seo Learning Tips

2008-11-04T00:35:00.000-08:00

When you follow the seo learning tips, then your site can get the following benefits

Seo Learning Tips can give traffic to your online business website which can aid it to gain popularity and visibility.
Seo Learning Tips are important and valuable tools that can make your online business be popular and it can aid to earn plenty of money.
With the help of seo learning tips, it can give you a lot of visitors at your website, which in time can be your customers.
If you make use of search engine optimization, your website can gain traffic and can be on the top rank of the major search engines and definitely, you can be lead from your competitors.
Seo Learning Tips uses plenty of methods that can make your websites continuously be on the top rank of the search engines listings. This can be possible with the aid of keyword or keywords rich articles.

Page tagging

2008-11-03T05:21:00.000-08:00

Concerns about the accuracy of logfile analysis in the presence of caching, and the desire to be able to perform web analytics as an outsourced service, led to the second data collection method, page tagging.

In the mid 1990s, Web counters were commonly seen — these were images included in a web page that showed the number of times the image had been requested, which was an estimate of the number of visits to that page. In the late 1990s this concept evolved to include a small invisible image instead of a visible one, and, by using JavaScript, to pass along with the image request certain information about the page and the visitor. This information can then be processed by a web analytics company, and extensive statistics generated. This can be done remotely, by the web analytics company.

The web analytics service also manages the process of assigning a cookie to the user, which can uniquely identify them during their visit and in subsequent visits.

Advantages of page tagging

The main advantages of page tagging over logfile analysis are as follows.

The JavaScript is automatically run every time the page is loaded. Thus there are fewer worries about caching.
It is easier to add additional information to the JavaScript, which can then be collected by the remote server. For example, information about the visitors' screen sizes, or the price of the goods they purchased, can be added in this way. With logfile analysis, information not normally collected by the web server can only be recorded by modifying the URL.
The page tagging service manages the process of assigning cookies to visitors; with logfile analysis, the server has to be configured to do this.
Page tagging is available to companies who do not run their own web servers.

Logfile Analysis

2008-11-03T05:20:00.001-08:00

Web servers have always recorded all their transactions in a logfile . It was soon realised that these logfiles could be read by a program to provide data on the popularity of the website. In the early 1990s, web site statistics consisted primarily of counting the number of client requests made to the web server. This was a reasonable method initially, since each web site often consisted of a single HTML file. However, with the introduction of images in HTML, and web sites that spanned multiple HTML files, this count became less useful.

Two units of measure were introduced in the mid 1990s to gauge more accurately the amount of human activity on web servers. These were page views and visits (or sessions). A page view was defined as a request made to the web server for a page, as opposed to a graphic, while a visit was defined as a sequence of requests from a uniquely identified client that expired after a certain amount of inactivity, usually 30 minutes. The page views and visits are still commonly displayed metrics, but are now considered rather unsophisticated measurements.

The emergence of search engine spiders and robots in the late 1990s, along with web proxies and dynamically assigned IP addresses for large companies and ISPs, made it more difficult to identify unique human visitors to a website. Log analyzers responded by tracking visits by cookies, and by ignoring requests from known spiders. The extensive use of web caches also presented a problem for logfile analysis. If a person revisits a page, the second request will often be retrieved from the browser's cache, and so no request will be received by the web server. This means that the person's path through the site is lost. Caching can be defeated by configuring the web server, but this can result in degraded performance for the visitor to the website.

Advantages of logfile analysis

The main advantages of logfile analysis over page tagging are as follows.

The web server normally already produces logfiles, so the raw data is already available. To collect data via page tagging requires changes to the website.
The web server reliably records every transaction it makes. Page tagging relies on the visitors' browsers co-operating, which a certain proportion may not do.
The data is on the company's own servers, and is in a standard, rather than a proprietary, format. This makes it easy for a company to switch programs later, use several different programs, and analyze historical data with a new program. Page tagging solutions involve vendor lock-in.
Logfiles contain information on visits from search engine spiders. Although these should not be reported as part of the human activity, it is important data for performing search engine optimization.
Logfiles contain information on failed requests; page tagging only records an event if the page is successfully viewed.

Website Analysis & Reporting

2008-11-03T05:04:00.000-08:00

Web Analytics
Web analytics is the measurement of the behaviour of visitors to a website. In a commercial context, it especially refers to the measurement of which aspects of the website work towards the business objectives; for example, which landing pages encourage people to make a purchase. Many different vendors provide web analytics software and services.

Web analytics technologies

There are two main technological approaches to collecting web analytics data. The first method, logfile analysis, reads the logfiles in which the web server records all its transactions. The second method, page tagging, uses JavaScript on each page to notify a third-party server when a page is rendered by a web browser.

1. logfile analysis
2. page tagging

Reporting Tools & Format

Website Ranking
Page crawling status
Status of Web Pages
Traffic Graph
Analysis of old and new data matrix

Different Ways of Link Popularity

2008-11-02T21:41:00.000-08:00

Directory Submissions

Free Directories

Directories which allow submissions of our web sites for FREE.
Directory Lists

http://www.directorycritic.com/free-directory-list.html

http://www.submithelper.com/User/User_Directory.aspx
http://info.vilesilencer.com

Paid Directories

Directories which is taking money for submissions of our web sites
1.Yahoo Directory :-
URL - http://dir.yahoo.com/
Page Rank – PR8
2. MSN Directory
3.Business Directory
Advantages of Paid Directories

Less Number of Outgoing links
Google Page Rank Helps
Fast Approval
Search Engine Friendly Links

Directory Submission Process
=> Search Best Relevant Category that suits to your site.
=> Look for Add URL / Submit URL / Submit Link / Add Here / Submit Here
=> General Fields which we need to submit.
=>Title
=>URL
=>Description
=>Name
=>E-mail Address
=>Checking for approval by mail or manually.

Anchor Text:
This is the text that is hyperlinked to send people to your website. Anchor text MUST contain a few of your main keywords because Google uses it to determine your websites relevance to a particular topic.

The website that links to you:
If the website that links to you is related to your site then that’s a huge bonus to you. So look for websites that are related to your website's topic.

Article Submissions

Article Submissions to help you market your website and your business.
Submit your article for distribution, publication and promotion.
Helps for generating quality back links.
Article should be more than 250+ words.
Use different targeted keywords frequently in article and take the advantage of anchor text.

Article Submissions List
http://www.directorycritic.com/article-directory-list.html
Few Very Famous Sites
=> http://www.ezinearticles.com
=>http://www.goarticles.com
=>http://www.articledashboard.com

* Need to Sign up for Submissions

Press Releases / Newswire

A simple 1-page press release can be the most powerful marketing tool. Here are top 3 reasons for using electronic news releases…
1. Media Relations
We can send your press releases via email to the journalists and websites that cover our industry. This will generate publicity for us in the form of news stories, product reviews, and links to our web site that will help in increase our credibility and sales.
2. Public Relations
By having electronic news release distributed through the Internet news channels such as Google News, Yahoo News and Topix.net, our message gets communicated to the members of our target market who read their news online. This generates more awareness of company, more traffic to website and more sales of product or service.
3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
This advantage is the biggest reason we distribute keyword optimized press releases (and articles).

Links

Why? Because a consistent publicity campaign can get you links from some of the best web sites on the Net. These links provide your web site with “Link Popularity” and the Google PageRank numbers you need for high search engine ranking and traffic. Plus, the links themselves can bring a significant about of qualified visitors to your site.

High Rankings

Many times your press release also ranks in the TOP 10 at Google within 1-2 weeks and provides targeted visitors to your web site for months and months to come. How’s that for a compelling reason to use press releases?!
Plus, you can (and should) post news releases on your web site on your “News Room” area. In fact, adding this keyword optimized press releases to your web site (in your News Room) will help with your natural rankings and traffic.

http://www.prweb.com :- The recognized leader in online news and press release distribution service for small and medium-sized businesses and corporate communications.
PRWeb pioneered Free Press Release Distribution and continues to set the standard for online news distribution.

Types of Links

2008-10-26T21:03:00.000-07:00

One Way Links

A "one-way text link" means that a Web site links to your Web site but you don’t link back to that Web site. One-way links, also known as non-reciprocal links, are much more difficult to obtain than traditional reciprocal links. In the eyes of search engines, one-way text links have a more natural flow and appear less self-serving. As a result, they are very valuable to your business because the more one-way links you have, the better your chances of an improved search engine ranking, page rank and link popularity.

Reciprocal Links / Two Way Links

A reciprocal link is where website [A] links to website [B], which in turn links to website [A].
Links between two sites, often based on an agreement by the site owners to exchange links.

Reciprocal links are based on an agreement by two sites to link to each other. Reciprocal linking is often used by small/midsize sites as an inexpensive way to increase Web site traffic and link popularity.

Three way Links

Three-Way Link Exchange is somehow similar to two-way link exchange but the difference is instead of putting a link to another site on your own site, you will place its link on the other site you have.
Three-Way link exchange is a cultivated term not a generic term. This term is used in case when more than two pages are involved in linking. It means that Page A is linking to Page B and Page B is linking to Page C. But Page B is not linking to Page A and Page C is not linking to Page B.

This is usually done when you own two websites. One website has already many back links and page rank and the other one don’t have many back links and/or don’t have page rank. You put a link to another site on the website that has already many back links and/or page rank and in return, your link exchange partner will put a link of your site that doesn’t have any page rank yet.

Google Toolbar

2008-10-24T02:00:00.000-07:00

Down Load the Google Tool Bar from –

http://toolbar.google.com

Important Points

Page Rank can not be common for all the pages of the site.
Google is giving Page Rank to each and every page that is in Google’s Index.
Page Rank can be different for http://www.site.com & http://site.com
Page Rank counts on scale of 0 to 10
Google Page Rank is not having any direct relationship with Google SERP (Search Engine Ranking Position)

Google Page Rank

2008-10-24T01:58:00.000-07:00

Page Rank is a function of Google that measures the quality of a website on a scale of 0 to10. The theory is that high quality sites receive a higher PageRank based on visitors and traffic your site receives. PageRank is a “vote”, by all the other pages on the internet.

Off page Optimization

2008-10-24T01:56:00.000-07:00

Avoid things that Search Engines Hates

2008-10-22T22:54:00.000-07:00

Dealing with Frames

A framed site is one in which the browser window is broken in to two or more parts, each of which holds a Web Page. Frames cause a number of problems as following:

Some search engines have trouble getting through the frame-definition or frameset page to the actual web pages.

If the search engine gets through, it indexes individual pages, not frame sets. Each page is indexed separately.

You cannot point to a particular page in your site. This may be a problem in the following situations:

Linking campaigns. Other sites can link to only the front of your site; they can’t link to specific pages during link campaign.

Pay-per-click campaigns. If you are running a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign, you cannot link directly to a page related to a particular product.

Placing your products in the shopping directories. In this case, you need to link to a particular product page.

Search Engine Spamming Techniques that should be avoided

Use of Invisible text:
Using invisible text is an extremely common search spamming practice in which a spammer uses a similar color for fonts as well as the background. Invisible text is used to stuff pages with keywords that are visible to search engines, but invisible to the viewers. All major search engines today can identify this kind of spamming easily and can penalize the site.

Stuffing keywords:
Keyword stuffing can be done in many ways. One most common way of doing this is by using invisible text. Other methods involve using keywords in very small fonts at the bottom of pages, using keywords in hidden tags (like no frames tag, alt tags, hidden value tags, option tags etc.) or stuffing the main content with repetitive keywords. Keyword stuffing is a trick that most search engines today are able to sniff out.

Link Spamming:
Link Spamming is the process of spamming search engines by getting thousands of inbound links from link farms, forums, blogs, free to all pages, unrelated websites or even by registering hundreds of domains and getting links from all of them generating a link empire. To put it in simple words link spamming is the process of getting inbound links through unethical practices solely for the purpose of ranking higher in search engines.

Most search engines give high level of importance to in-bound links and consider them as an indication that the site is credible. Participating in free for all and linking farms can get any site thousands of in-bound links, which can make them look important in the eyes of the search engines when they actually aren't. Most search engines today have come up with strict measures to deal with such kind of spamming and can even ban an involved website completely from their search listings.

Cloaking:
Simply put, cloaking is any process that involves presenting search engines with one set of information and the visitors with another. The copy presented to the search engines is highly optimized and hence the search but may rank it higher.

Creating Doorway Pages:
Doorway pages are pages that are highly optimized for search engines. They are similar to junk pages and contain nothing but keywords and irrelevant content. When a visitor enters such a page, his is either automatically redirected or asked to click on a JavaScript link.

It is not necessary that all doorway pages should always look this way. There are ways in which good and related information can be provided making the doorway pages an informative page instead of a page that contains nothing but junk. Only when one tries to take shortcuts does he relent to creating junk pages instead of offering informational content.

Page redirects:
Often people create spam filled Web pages intended for the eyes of search engines only. When someone visits those pages, they are redirected to the real page by META refresh tags, CGI, Java, JavaScript, or server side techniques. There are legitimate reasons for cloaking and similar techniques, but don't use them unless you know exactly what you are doing.

Duplicate Content:
Its Possible that content duplication is the single biggest SEO problem faced by websites today. Whether the duplication is interntional or not, presenting the same content to search engines under multiple URLs can cause a site to be ranked poorly or penalized. In some cases, it prevents indexing entirely.

Google Sitemap.xml

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What is Google Sitemap.xml?

The Sitemap Protocol allows you to inform search engines about URLs on your websites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap that uses the Sitemap Protocol is an XML file that lists URLs for a site. The protocol was written to be highly scalable so it can accommodate sites of any size. It also enables webmasters to include additional information about each URL (when it was last updated; how often it changes; how important it is in relation to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.

Sitemaps are particularly beneficial when users can't reach all areas of a website through a browseable interface. (Generally, this is when users are unable to reach certain pages or regions of a site by following links). For example, any site where certain pages are only accessible via a search form would benefit from creating a Sitemap and submitting it to search engines.

This document describes the formats for Sitemap files and also explains where you should post your Sitemap files so that search engines can retrieve them.

Please note that the Sitemap Protocol supplements, but does not replace, the crawl-based mechanisms that search engines already use to discover URLs. By submitting a Sitemap (or Sitemaps) to a search engine, you will help that engine's crawlers to do a better job of crawling your site.

Using this protocol does not guarantee that your webpages will be included in search indexes. (Note that using this protocol will not influence the way your pages are ranked by Google.)

Robots.txt

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Spiders and Robots Exclusion

Web Robots are programs that automatically traverse the Web's hypertext structure by retrieving a document, and recursively retrieving all documents that are referenced. This page explains how you can control what these robots do when visiting your site.

What is Robots.txt?

The Robots Exclusion Protocol is a method that allows Web site administrators to indicate to visiting robots which parts of their site should not be visited by the robot. When a Robot visits a web site, it first checks for the file robots.txt in the root directory; e.g. http://Stars.com/robots.txt. If it can find this file, it will analyze its contents to see if it may retrieve further documents (files). You can customize the robots.txt file to apply only to specific robots, and to disallow access to specific directories or files. Here is a sample robots.txt file that prevents all robots from visiting the entire site:-

# Tells Scanning Robots Where They Are and Are Not Welcome

# User-agent:           can also specify by name; "*" is for everyone

# Disallow:               if this matches first part of requested path,

# forget it

User-agent: *    # applies to all robots

Disallow: / # disallow indexing of all pages

The record starts with one or more User-agent lines, specifying which robots the record applies to, followed by "Disallow" and "Allow" instructions to that robot. To evaluate if access to a URL is allowed, a robot must attempt to match the paths in Allow and Disallow lines against the URL, in the order they occur in the record. The first match found is used. If no match is found, the default assumption is that the URL is allowed.

For example:

User-agent: webcrawler

User-agent: infoseek

Allow:    /tmp/ok.html

Disallow: /tmp

WebCrawler and InfoSeek are not allowed access to the /tmp/ directory, except to access ok.html. All other robots are allowed unrestricted access.

Sometimes robots get stuck in CGI programs, trying to evoke all possible outputs. This keeps robots out of the cgi-bin directory, and disallows execution of a specific CGI program in the /Ads/ directory:-

User-agent: *

Disallow: /cgi-bin/

Disallow: /Ads/banner.cgi

Robots.txt is a simple text file tha’s uploaded to the root directory of a website. Spirders request this file first, and process it before they crawl the site. The simplest robots.txt file possible is this:

User-agent: *

Disallow:

That’s it, The first line identifies the user agent; an asterisk means that the following lines apply to all agents. The blank after Disallow: means that no part of the site is off limits.

This robots.txt file doesn’t do anything: all user agents are able to see everything on the site. It’s worth putting a robots.txt file on every website, even it it doesn’t restrict the content that spiders may access. Doing so will prevent the server from returning (and logging) a 404 Not Found error every time a spider requests robots.txt Although a missing robots.txt file foes no real harm from an SEO perspective, the 404 errors can be annoying to webmasters who are examining log files in an attempt to identify real problems.

H1 Tag

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Title /heading of the page should be mentioned in H1 tag, the length of title should be limited to 60-80 characters. The standard usage of H1 tag is 3 times for the home page and once in the inner pages

Internal Links And Sitemap page Optimization

Creating Sitemap Page:

A sitemap is a web page that lists all the web pages on a website, typically organized in hierarchical way. Sitemap helps visitors and search engine bots to find pages on the site. It provides quick finding for search engine robot. Depending on the size of your website, it may actually link to all of your pages.
A truncated example version (For EDFED) would sit in the top left corner of his home page – and look like this.

Creating navigation structure

Creating navigation structure, that search engine can read:

Your navigation structure needs to be visible to the search engines. A navigation structure created with JavaScript will not work for the search engines.

Add a site map page and link to it from your main navigation. It provides another way for search engines to find out all pages.
Whenever possible, provide keywords in text links as part of the navigation structure.
Even if your navigation structure is visible to search engines, you may want to have these bottom-of-page links as well. They are convenient for site visitors and provide another chance for the search engines to find your other pages. Another reason of that is basic text navigation.

Creating a good and proper directory structure is also very important. Keep your pages as close to the root domain as possible, rather than have a complicated multilevel directory structure. Create a directory for each navigation tab and keep all the files in that directory.
e.g. http://www.edfed.com/student-loan-consolidation/student-loan-consolidation.php

Naming Files

Giving the proper keyword or product related names to all the images, pages etc… and the page names should be in lowercase.
e.g.
http://www.edfed.com/student-loan-consolidation.php .

Avoiding Flash Animation

You should avoid using Flash Animations in the site because search engines cannot read the Flash Animations. However, if it is necessary to use Flash Animations in the site then there are a few things you can do to help with indexing:

Make sure you use your TITLE tags and DESCRIPTION and KEYWORDS Meta tag.
Put text between tags. You could use text; you can separate each keyword with comma and a space. Do not use both but use both a comma and no space or use a space and no comma.
Make sure that most of the keywords in the tag are also in the body text.
Don’t use a lot of repetition.
Don’t use the same KEYWORD tag in all your pages.

Avoiding embedded text in images

You should avoid using the embedded text in images means you should use text base information in place of images which displays the information of content in it. And also use of large images should be avoided in the home page.

Adding body text

You need text in the page but it should not be more than 100 to 250 words. If you are putting article in the page and the article is of 1000 words, then it is ok. However, the 100-250 word range is good. That amount of content allows you to really define, what the page is about and will help the search engine understand what the page is about.

Home page must contain the short information about all the facilities and products.
Other pages should contain the information regarding that page with the important keywords related to that page.
Keywords should used and repeated in content of all pages.

Creating Headers

HTML has several tags that define headers: H1, H2, H3 and so on. These headers are useful in search engine optimization, because when you put keywords into a heading, you are saying to search engine, “These keywords are so important that they appear in heading text” and search engine pays more attention to them. Weighing them more heavily than keywords in body text.

Formatting text

You can also tell the search engines that a particular word might be significant several other ways. If the text is displayed in some different way in the page means the search engine may assume that it is been set off for some reason. Following are few things you can set your keywords apart from the other words on the page:

Make the text bold.
Make the text italic.
Uppercase the first letter in Each Word, and lowercase the other letters in the word.

Creating links

Links in your pages serve several purposes:

They help searchbots find other pages in your site.
Keywords in links tell search engines about the pages that the links are pointing at.
Keywords in links also tell the search engines about the page containing the links.
All the links must be text based hyperlinks.

URL Rewriting

URL rewriting takes the variables out of a dynamic site URL and remaps them into a shorter version. For example:

OldURL: - http://www.example.com/index.php?this=1234&that=5678
Shorter, rewritten URL : http://www.example.com/1234/5678

When a user request a URL such as http://www.example.com/1234/5678, that URL is rewritten by the server behind the scenes so that the cript receives the variables this =1234 and that =5678. The scripts that drive the site must be written so that they create the shorter URL for links. The server translates the requested URLs internally without showing the translated version to the visitors.

Anchor text

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Anchor text is the hyperlinked words on a web page – the words you click on when you click a link. Anchor text usually gives your visitors useful information about the content of the page you're linking to. It tells search engines what the page is about. Used wisely, it boosts your rankings in search engines, especially in Google.

You can use anchor text in:

* External links – links from other sites
* Internal links – links on your pages
* Navigation maps
* Links on your main page. A very important spot.

On page Factors (Title Tags, Meta Tags, Alt Tags)

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What is Meta Tags

An element of HTML coding on a website that is used by search engines to index a website. Most meta-tags are included within the 'header' code of a website and the most important tags are the title, description and keyword tags. Rules used by different search engines govern how such tags are used, how many characters they should contain, and how they should be formatted.

What is TITLE Tag?

The TITLE tag is one of the most important components as far as search engines are concerned. Because the site’s TITLE tag as the link and main title of the site’s listing on the search engine result page. Following are some rules about the TITLE tags:

1. Place your TITLE tags immediately below the HEAD tag.

2. Place 40 to 65 characters between the TITLE tags, including spaces.

3. Put the keyword phrase you want to focus on for this page at a very beginning of the TITLE.

What is Description Meta Tag:

An HTML tag that gives a general description of the contents of the page. This description is not displayed on the page itself, but is largely intended to help the search engines index the page correctly.

The DESCRIPTION Meta tag describes the web page to the search engines.

1. They read and index the text in the tag.
2. Some search engines grabs the text form of the DESCRIPTION tag and places it under the text form of TITLE tag so searcher can read your description.
3. Some times search engines may not use the DESCRIPTION you provide. However, it uses the description with the keyword from the body text of that page or it may use the description of some standard web directories.
4. Some smaller search engine uses the DESCRIPTION tag in the results.

Following are some rules about the DESCRIPTION tags

1. The DESCRIPTION Meta tag is very important so you should use it in your site.
2. Place your DESCRIPTION tag immediately below the TITLE tags.
3. Create a nice keyworded description of up to 250 characters, including spaces.
4. Duplicate your important keywords once in the description but not more than that.

What is Keyword Meta Tag:

This was important many years past, but this Meta tag is not so important these days. Some search engines may use it, but many don’t.

Following are some rules about the KEYWORDS tag

1. Limit the tag up to 300 characters, including spaces.
2. You can separate each keyword with comma and a space. Don’t use both but use either a comma or no space or use a space and no comma.
3. Make sure that most of the keywords in the tag are also in the body text.
4. Don’t use a lot of repetition.
5. Don’t use the same KEYWORDS tag in all your pages.

Using Other Meta tags

There are many other Meta tags but that not all are important but some of them are useful and that are as following:

Including image ALT text

When you are using image tag to insert images on the web pages. This tag can include the ALT= attribute, which means attribute text. Search engines also read ALT texts.

On page Optimization

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The following comes under On page Optimization

On page Factors (Title Tags, Meta Tags, Alt Tags)

Anchor text

H1 Tag

Robots.txt

Google Sitemap.xml

Avoid things that Search Engines Hates

Where you must use keyword phrases

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Title tag - The title is particularly important and should include your primary keyword phrase and if possible your secondary phrase
Description tag - If your description contains the search term people enter, and it is the first text that Googlebot comes across, then you’ve a good chance that Google will display your description in the results
Headings and subheadings - The tags that are used throughout an article should contain keywords. So a heading of “Our new product range” is poor; “Our new range of vegetarian dog food” is better
Body copy - The writer should understand what the keyword phrases are and use them in natural language on the page
• Links on the page - The words used in live links tell the search engine what “this page” is about and also what the “linked-to page” is about
Alt text - For every image, write an alt attribute tag, good for both accessibility and optimization

Additional areas/places

References at the bottom of the article
Add a takeaway box
Link title
Testimonials from satisfied customers
Signature box at the end of the article

Reference
http://www.wordtracker.com/keyword-research-guide.pdf

Tips for Effective Keyword Research

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· Start with a goal in mind

As with all marketing efforts you should have a goal for what you are trying to achieve. Whether it is to increase sales, gain newsletter subscribers, or get new prospect leads, this goal will help to set priorities keyword phrase selection and impact the overall success of your Search Engine Optimization efforts. Take the time to discuss and establish goals and priorities at the start.

· Think like a Prospective Customer

When it comes to search sites, it is the prospective customer who initiates the dialog (query) so it is important that you select keyword phrases that reflect what a prospective customer will enter in at the search site. Users often enter phrases are the legal or proper terms for a product or service, and sometimes the phrases they enter may be totally outside industry jargon. In either case, be sure to select keywords that are naturally intuitive to the customer.

Brainstorm

Brainstorming is a great way to start generating a list of possible keyword phrases. The brainstorming group should include those with direct customer access (sales reps, customer support representatives, product/content experts, and marketing – don’t forget to review your own log files for additional data). Try to generate as many words as possible and then narrow your list quantitatively using industry tools and qualitatively using your industry knowledge. When you brainstorm, remember to step out of yourself and into the mindset of the prospective customer.

Check your Content for Keywords

If the Keywords you optimize for are not used within the copy of your site, you will not be able to get rankings for those terms. Once you have established a list of keywords, review your site. Be prepared to add new content to your site that can be optimized to support the new mix of Keywords.

Goal is Conversions not Traffic

The goal of Search Engine Optimization, and your keyword research, is not to just get traffic, but to get valuable, ‘qualified’ traffic that can lead to actual conversions. You will find the different keyword phrases have a large difference in conversion rates and value for your site. Don’t forget that increased revenues will be the ultimate measure of your success.

Avoid short, common phrases

Short phrases (1 or 2 words) that are also common phrases can be too general and are not the best to optimize for. Common phrases can lead to a large portion of the traffic that is searching on similar terms but not looking for your product or service. The amount of time and effort needed to gain valuable rankings and traffic for those phrases will also be much greater than the time required for more targeted keyword phrases. Targeted keyword phrases may generate slightly less overall traffic, but with targeted keywords you will achieve ‘qualified’ traffic – leading to increased revenues.

Keyword Research is an ongoing process

Keyword research is a continuous process. Whatever you do, don’t stop. As your SEO program progresses, examine what words perform best, enhance your keyword list based on what you learn, go back and review old keyword ideas against current data and usage trends, and continue to review your site content for synergy with your keyword list. Ongoing keyword/Keyword research will uncover new keyword phrases, while keeping you abreast of your competition, and shifts in the search site industry.

Keyword Research Tools

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http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

http://www.wordtracker.com/

http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword/

The above are the 3 main Keyword Research tools.

Advantages of Keyword Research

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Drive traffic to your site by using the words people use when they’re searching
Write great website copy by incorporating terms that people immediately identify with
Plan profitable pay-per-click campaigns by building up a broad range of keyword phrases that will capture your market
Develop great content ideas that directly address your customers’ needs
Understand your customers’ behavior and concerns by analyzing the words that they use
Measure the size of a potential online market by the number of searches conducted, and
Develop new revenue streams by using popular keywords to inspire new product and service ideas

What is Keyword Research?

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Keyword Research can be defined as choosing the words, which describe your product or service as, seen from the viewpoint of your target market is the most important step in the optimization process.

Keyword Research is the process of defining the right mix of keywords, which are most likely to be used by potential customers at search engines and directories.

This Keyword research consists of a variety of inputs, both qualitative and quantitative, both creative and analytical. Keyword Research plays a crucial role in assuring that your prospective customers will find you when they are looking for your specific products and services.

Why do we need Keywords

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Seo (search engine optimization) tips for keywords is one of the starting points for good search engine optimization.

Seo keywords is one of the very first things that you will do when you begin to optimize your web site for high natural search engine rankings. Although it is foundational, meaning that you practically have to do it, it keywords for seo is a very small portion of the work that needs to be done for good seo. It is one of the least impactful components of seo.

Keyword Research & Analysis

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Web Design Guidelines

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Designing a Web Site for Success

There are millions of web sites on the Internet today with thousands more being added each day. The competition is fierce and in order to be successful, you must stay one step ahead of the game.

One of the most important aspects of your success is your web site. Your web site is a direct reflection of you and your business. The appearance of your web site is the most important factor in determining your sites value. If your site doesn't look professional or pleasing to the eyes at first glance, its perceived value will be low. The perceived value of your web site will have a great impact on your chance of success or failure.

On the other hand, you may have a great web site, well designed and a quality product or service, but if it takes too long to load, the value will still be perceived as low. Why? Because you’re potential customer will not wait. Ultimately costing you business.

According to two surveys, conducted by Forrester Research and Gartner Group, ecommerce sites are losing $1.1 to $1.3 billion in revenue each year due to customer click-away caused by slow loading web sites.

The main page of your web site should load within 8 seconds or less with a 56K modem. To keep your load time down:

Avoid using large slow loading graphics
Avoid using large or too many animated graphics
Limit the number of banners to no more than two per page
If you must use Java, use it sparingly
If you're using Flash, provide your visitors with an alternative link to skip the intro

Another consideration of great importance is the Search Engines. You must specifically design your web site to rank high in the Search Engines. If your site isn't listed within the top thirty search results, your potential customers won't be able to find you. When optimizing your page for the Search Engines, it is essential to include all of the following:

Web Site Design Guidelines:

Your main page should specifically let your visitors know exactly what you're offering. If your potential customer can't find your product or service, they definitely won't waste a lot of time looking for it. They'll go on to the next site and probably never return. They're visiting your site for a specific purpose. They want something your site offers.
Create a page to display your "Privacy Policy" in regard to the personal information you collect from your visitors such as, email address, Internet Service Provider, etc.. Explain your reasons for collecting the information and let them know how the information will be used.
Create a page about you and/or your company. Include your name, company name, photograph, biography, address, phone number and email contact information.
Display your copyright information at the bottom of each page.
Keep in mind, your visitors may enter your site from pages other than your main, so make sure you include good navigational links on every page. Place your navigation links together at the top, bottom, left or right side of the page. Use tables to neatly align your links and maintain a nicely organized and uniform appearance throughout. Try to keep the number of clicks required to get from your main page to any other page on your site down to four and place your company logo on each page.
Use caution when selecting your background and text colors. Busy backgrounds make text difficult to read and draw the attention away from the text. In addition, always be consistent with your background theme on each page of your site. Keep in mind, colors affect your mood and will have an affect on your visitors as well. Bright colors such as yellow and orange, cause you to become more cheerful or happy, while colors such as blue and purple have a calming effect. Dark colors such as brown and black have a depressing effect. A good rule of thumb is to use colors based upon the type of effect you're trying to achieve.
ALWAYS check and double-check your site for spelling errors and make sure your images and links are all working properly. If you have several errors, this will make your site appear to be unprofessional. If you are designing your site using an HTML editor, use spell check. Proper grammar is also very important.
If you must use frames, use them sparingly. Frames, if not used properly, can make your site look unprofessional. Avoid making your visitors have to scroll from side to side to view your content. This can be very irritating and cause your visitors to leave.
If you must use Java on your site, use it sparingly. Java can be slow and has a tendency to crash browsers.
If you're using pop-up windows to display special offers or ezine subscription information, try to use a JavaScript that utilizes cookies. This way, the window will only be displayed to your visitors the first time they visit your web site.
View your web site through different browsers and screen resolutions so you will see how your visitors will view your site. Visit:

SiteOwner - Check your web pages for HTML validity and browser compatibility.
http://www.siteinspector.com/

NetMechanic - Provides a variety of free services for your web site including; browser compatibility testing, graphic file size reduction, link check, HTML check, load time check, spell check and more.
http://www.netmechanic.com/
(1) Continually add new content to your site. Give your visitors a reason to keep coming back.

Web Design Mistakes to Avoid:

- Animated bullets
- Broken links and graphics
- Busy, distracting backgrounds
- Confusing
- Different backgrounds on each page
- Large fonts
- Large scrolling text across the page
- Large slow loading graphics
- Large Welcome banners
- Multiple banners and buttons
- Multiple colored text
- Multiple use of animated graphics
- Multiple use of different fonts
- No contact information
- No Meta tags
- Over powering music set to AutoPlay
- Over use of Java
- Pages scrolling to oblivion
- Poor browser compatibility
- Poor content
- Poor load time
- Poor navigation
- Poor organization
- Poor overall appearance
- Poor use of frames
- Poor use of mouse over effect
- Poor use of tables
- Pop up messages
- Scrolling text in the status bar
- Spelling/Grammar mistakes
- Text difficult to read
- Too many graphic and/or line dividers
- Too many graphics
- Too much advertising
- Under construction signs

If you've never designed a web page, it would be wise to become familiar with HTML. (Hypertext Markup Language.) A great place to start is NCSA Beginner's Guide to HTML:

http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimer.html

Take some time to research and plan your web site. Your success depends upon it. The simple, well-designed sites make the sales.

Web Analysis Relation with SEO

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Search Engine Optimization

The objective of Search Engine Optimization is to increase web visitor counts by ranking very high in the results of searches using the most appropriate keywords describing the content of your site. This relative ranking is often viewed as a struggle to best use a few keywords, instead of a struggle to out-do your competition. If you search on your target keywords, you will see the leading site in the rankings. All you need to do is to be better than that number one site. This page suggests ways to optimize and improve search engine results with ranking and placement advice, information, hints, tips, and clues to improve your search engine keywords relative to existing leaders. After all, better keyword ranking is your real objective.
It is not enough to simply add META tags and do search engine submission of your site to a million search engine indexes and directories. The first placement step in obtaining significant web visitor counts is to seek first-page search engine results. An early step is to build a great content-rich site. One of the last steps is the proper submission of your great site to the search engine or directory. In the middle is a step that is VITAL if you want to obtain front-page results. Most sites skim past this step because it is forgotten or too complex, but without competent Search Engine Optimization you are destined to be search engine fodder. The following FREE tools and advice describes how to design your keywords with Search Engine Optimization and ranking in mind.

There are no Search Engine Optimization secrets -- just ranking and placement methodologies to follow in order to beat your competition in obtaining a high ranking for desired search keywords. SEO training, content and link services are just one small part. This site targets improving search engine rankings by using a "follow the leader" approach to keyword selection and page wording. Once you know what keywords and search engine marketing services (not spam) worked for the "leaders", you can "beat the leader" and do even better! Proper Search Engine Optimization requires that you beat your competition, so knowing the keywords and criterion used by your competition is the most important first step. It will become obvious that good ranking excludes keyword spamming the search engine, and that with the careful selection of your keywords that you will fare well for a little effort. The Bruce Clay website offers help, hints, and tips for improving search engine results via a specific search engine keywords placement methodology.

Search Engine Optimization Overview

What is Search Engine Optimization? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the science of search as it relates to marketing on the web. It is mostly technical in nature, combining programming with business, persuasion, sales, and a love for competitive puzzle solving into a written form capable of maintaining desired revenue goals while achieving high rankings in the organic sections of search engine results pages. It is not just technical, nor copywriting, nor links, nor just searches engine submission, but an intricate blend of over a hundred variables into the fabric of a website. It is difficult to accomplish without a formal proven methodology and strong proprietary tools. We offer you a tutorial on all of that and more on these pages...

Before you start, you should understand that top 10 rankings with every single major search engine and directory can be obtained, although very few sites can get there and the effort is often beyond reason. Note: URL ranking results change week-to-week due to competition, so maintaining a top ranking requires constant keywords monitoring and information rework. Search Engine Optimization never rests, much like your competition.
"It is not the job of Search Engine Optimization to make a pig fly. It is the job of the SEO to genetically re-engineer the web site so that it becomes an eagle."
The key information on this page includes how to prepare both you and your site for the search engines, choosing the right keywords, how to analyze your competition, what is submission and how is it best accomplished, when to monitor your ranking, instructions for performing an analysis of your site results, complete with tools and aids. This site covers all basic and advanced strategies and the common mistakes to avoid.

Competetor Analysis

2008-09-29T23:03:00.000-07:00

Competitor analysis in marketing and strategic management is an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of current and potential competitors . This analysis provides both an offensive and defensive strategic context through which to identify opportunities and threats. Competitor profiling coalesces all of the relevant sources of competitor analysis into one framework in the support of efficient and effective strategy formulation, implementation, monitoring and adjustment.

Given that competitor analysis is an essential component of corporate strategy, Porter (1980, 1998) argued that most firms do not conduct this type of analysis systematically enough. Instead, many enterprises operate on what he calls “informal impressions, conjectures, and intuition gained through the tidbits of information about competitors every manager continually receives.” As a result, traditional environmental scanning places many firms at risk of dangerous competitive blindspots due to a lack of robust competitor analysis

Website Analysis & Competitor Analysis

2008-09-29T23:01:00.000-07:00

Why is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Important?

2008-09-29T02:08:00.000-07:00

The Internet has provided WAYS to revolutionize how we live our daily lives. It has crawled into the different dimensions of human lives- business, communication, information dissemination, personal relationships. People have made a paradigm shift towards using the Internet to aid them in their daily activities.

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 Adwords 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.

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 should be cautious, however, in hiring a search engine optimization company or consultant. Factors such as pricing and service should carefully be assessed before signing a deal. If done properly, 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.

List of Major Search Engines

2008-09-29T01:58:00.000-07:00

Google
http://www.google.com

Voted four times Most Outstanding Search Engine by all Search Engine Optimizers, Google has a well-deserved reputation as the top choice for those searching the web. The crawler-based service provides both comprehensive coverage of the web along with great relevancy. It's highly recommended as a first stop in your hunt for whatever you are looking for.
Google provides the option to find more than web pages, however. Using on the top of the search box on the Google home page, you can easily seek out images from across the web, discussions that are taking place on Usenet newsgroups, locate news information or perform product searching. Using the More link provides access to human-compiled information from the Open Directory, catalog searching and other services.
Google is also known for the wide range of features it offers, such as cached links that let you "resurrect" dead pages or see older versions of recently changed ones. It offers excellent spell checking, easy access to dictionary definitions, integration of stock quotes, street maps, telephone numbers and more. See Google's help page for an entire rundown on some of these features. The Google Toolbar has also won a popular following for the easy access it provides to Google and its features directly from the Internet Explorer browser.

In addition to Google's unpaid editorial results, the company also operates its own advertising programs. The cost-per-click AdWords program places ads on Google as well as some of Google's partners. Similarly, Google is also a provider of unpaid editorial results to some other search engines.

Google was originally a Stanford University project by students Larry Page and Sergey Brin called BackRub. By 1998, the name had been changed to Google, and the project jumped off campus and became the private company Google. It remains privately held today.

Yahoo
http://www.yahoo.com

Launched in 1994, Yahoo is the web's oldest "directory," a place where human editors organize web sites into categories. However, in October 2002, Yahoo made a giant shift to crawler-based listings for its main results. These came from Google until February 2004. Now, Yahoo uses its own search technology.

Overture was formerly called GoTo until late 2001. More about it can be found on the Paid Listings Search Engines page. Overture purchased AllTheWeb in March 2003 and acquired AltaVista in April 2003. Now Yahoo owns these, gained as from its purchase of Overture.
Technology AltaVista and AllTheWeb was combined with that of Inktomi, a crawler-based search engine that grew out UC Berkeley and then launched as its own company in 1996, to make the current Yahoo crawler. Yahoo purchased Inktomi in March 2003.

MSN Search
http://search.msn.com

Formerly one of Search Engine Watch's top choices, MSN Search is definitely one to watch. The service was previously powered by LookSmart results and gained top marks for having its own team of editors that monitored the most popular searches being performed to hand-pick sites believed to be the most relevant. The system worked well.

Ask Jeeves
http://www.askjeeves.com

Ask Jeeves initially gained fame in 1998 and 1999 as being the "natural language" search engine that let you search by asking questions and responded with what seemed to be the right answer to everything.

AllTheWeb
http://www.alltheweb.com

Powered by Yahoo, you may find AllTheWeb a lighter, more customizable and pleasant "pure search" experience than you get at Yahoo itself. The focus is on web search, but news, picture, video, MP3 and FTP search are also offered.

AOL Search
http://aolsearch.aol.com (internal)
http://search.aol.com/(external)

AOL Search provides users with editorial listings that come Google's crawler-based index. Indeed, the same search on Google and AOL Search will come up with very similar matches. So, why would you use AOL Search? Primarily because you are an AOL user. The "internal" version of AOL Search provides links to content only available within the AOL online service. In this way, you can search AOL and the entire web at the same time. The "external" version lacks these links. Why wouldn't you use AOL Search? If you like Google, many of Google's features such as "cached" pages are not offered by AOL Search.

HotBot
http://www.hotbot.com

HotBot provides easy access to the web's three major crawler-based search engines: Yahoo, Google and Teoma. Unlike a meta search engine, it cannot blend the results from all of these crawlers together. Nevertheless, it's a fast, easy way to get different web search "opinions" in one place.
HotBot's "choose a search engine" interface was introduced in December 2002. However, HotBot has a long history as a search brand before this date.

Teoma
http://www.teoma.com

Teoma is a crawler-based search engine owned by Ask Jeeves. It has a smaller index of the web than its rival crawler-competitors Google and Yahoo. However, being large doesn't make much of a difference when it comes to popular queries, and Teoma's won praise for its relevancy since it appeared in 2000. Some people also like its "Refine" feature, which offers suggested topics to explore after you do a search. The "Resources" section of results is also unique, pointing users to page that specifically serve as link resources about various topics. Teoma was purchased by Ask Jeeves in September 2001 and also provides some results to that web site.

AltaVista
http://www.altavista.com

AltaVista opened in December 1995 and for several years was the "Google" of its day, in terms of providing relevant results and having a loyal group of users that loved the service.
Sadly, an attempt to turn AltaVista into a portal site in 1998 saw the company lose track of the importance of search. Over time, relevancy dropped, as did the freshness of AltaVista's listings and the crawler's coverage of the web.

Gigablast
http://www.gigablast.com

Compared to Google, Yahoo or even Teoma, Gigablast has a tiny index of the web. However, the service is constantly gaining new and interesting features.

LookSmart
http://www.looksmart.com

LookSmart is primarily a human-compiled directory of web sites. It gathers its listings in two ways. Commercial sites pay to be listed in its commercial categories, making the service very much like an electronic "Yellow Pages." However, volunteer editors at the LookSmart-owned Zeal directory also catalog sites into non-commercial categories for free. Though Zeal is a separate web site, its listings are integrated into LookSmart's results.

Lycos
http://www.lycos.com

Lycos is one of the oldest search engines on the web, launched in 1994. It ceased crawling the web for its own listings in April 1999 and instead provides access to human-powered results from LookSmart for popular queries and crawler-based results from Yahoo for others.

How Search Engines Rank Web Pages

2008-09-24T00:09:00.000-07:00

Search for anything using your favorite crawler-based search engine. Nearly instantly, the search engine will sort through the millions of pages it knows about and present you with ones that match your topic. The matches will even be ranked, so that the most relevant ones come first.

Of course, the search engines don't always get it right. Non-relevant pages make it through, and sometimes it may take a little more digging to find what you are looking for. But, by and large, search engines do an amazing job.

As WebCrawler founder Brian Pinkerton puts it, "Imagine walking up to a librarian and saying, 'travel.' They’re going to look at you with a blank face."

OK -- a librarian's not really going to stare at you with a vacant expression. Instead, they're going to ask you questions to better understand what you are looking for.

Unfortunately, search engines don't have the ability to ask a few questions to focus your search, as a librarian can. They also can't rely on judgment and past experience to rank web pages, in the way humans can.

So, how do crawler-based search engines go about determining relevancy, when confronted with hundreds of millions of web pages to sort through? They follow a set of rules, known as an algorithm. Exactly how a particular search engine's algorithm works is a closely-kept trade secret. However, all major search engines follow the general rules below.

Location, Location, Location...and Frequency

One of the the main rules in a ranking algorithm involves the location and frequency of keywords on a web page. Call it the location/frequency method, for short.

Remember the librarian mentioned above? They need to find books to match your request of "travel," so it makes sense that they first look at books with travel in the title. Search engines operate the same way. Pages with the search terms appearing in the HTML title tag are often assumed to be more relevant than others to the topic.

Search engines will also check to see if the search keywords appear near the top of a web page, such as in the headline or in the first few paragraphs of text. They assume that any page relevant to the topic will mention those words right from the beginning.

Frequency is the other major factor in how search engines determine relevancy. A search engine will analyze how often keywords appear in relation to other words in a web page. Those with a higher frequency are often deemed more relevant than other web pages.

Spice in the Recipe

Now it's time to qualify the location/frequency method described above. All the major search engines follow it to some degree, in the same way cooks may follow a standard chili recipe. But cooks like to add their own secret ingredients. In the same way, search engines add spice to the location/frequency method. Nobody does it exactly the same, which is one reason why the same search on different search engines produces different results.

To begin with, some search engines index more web pages than others. Some search engines also index web pages more often than others. The result is that no search engine has the exact same collection of web pages to search through. That naturally produces differences, when comparing their results.

Search engines may also penalize pages or exclude them from the index, if they detect search engine "spamming." An example is when a word is repeated hundreds of times on a page, to increase the frequency and propel the page higher in the listings. Search engines watch for common spamming methods in a variety of ways, including following up on complaints from their users.

Off The Page Factors

Crawler-based search engines have plenty of experience now with webmasters who constantly rewrite their web pages in an attempt to gain better rankings. Some sophisticated webmasters may even go to great lengths to "reverse engineer" the location/frequency systems used by a particular search engine. Because of this, all major search engines now also make use of "off the page" ranking criteria.

Off the page factors are those that a webmasters cannot easily influence. Chief among these is link analysis.

By analyzing how pages link to each other, a search engine can both determine what a page is about and whether that page is deemed to be "important" and thus deserving of a ranking boost. In addition, sophisticated techniques are used to screen out attempts by webmasters to build "artificial" links designed to boost their rankings.

Another off the page factor is click through measurement. In short, this means that a search engine may watch what results someone selects for a particular search, then eventually drop high-ranking pages that aren't attracting clicks, while promoting lower-ranking pages that do pull in visitors. As with link analysis, systems are used to compensate for artificial links generated by eager webmasters.

How Search Engines Work

2008-09-23T23:52:00.000-07:00

The term "search engine" is often used generically to describe both crawler-based search engines and human-powered directories. These two types of search engines gather their listings in radically different ways.

Crawler-Based Search Engines

Crawler-based search engines, such as Google, create their listings automatically. They "crawl" or "spider" the web, then people search through what they have found.
If you change your web pages, crawler-based search engines eventually find these changes, and that can affect how you are listed. Page titles, body copy and other elements all play a role.

Human-Powered Directories

A human-powered directory, such as the Open Directory, depends on humans for its listings. You submit a short description to the directory for your entire site, or editors write one for sites they review. A search looks for matches only in the descriptions submitted.

Changing your web pages has no effect on your listing. Things that are useful for improving a listing with a search engine have nothing to do with improving a listing in a directory. The only exception is that a good site, with good content, might be more likely to get reviewed for free than a poor site.

Hybrid Search Engines Or Mixed Results

In the web's early days, it used to be that a search engine either presented crawler-based results or human-powered listings. Today, it extremely common for both types of results to be presented. Usually, a hybrid search engine will favor one type of listings over another. For example, MSN Search is more likely to present human-powered listings from LookSmart. However, it does also present crawler-based results (as provided by Inktomi), especially for more obscure queries.

The Parts Of A Crawler-Based Search Engine

Crawler-based search engines have three major elements. First is the spider, also called the crawler. The spider visits a web page, reads it, and then follows links to other pages within the site. This is what it means when someone refers to a site being "spidered" or "crawled." The spider returns to the site on a regular basis, such as every month or two, to look for changes.

Everything the spider finds goes into the second part of the search engine, the index. The index, sometimes called the catalog, is like a giant book containing a copy of every web page that the spider finds. If a web page changes, then this book is updated with new information.

Sometimes it can take a while for new pages or changes that the spider finds to be added to the index. Thus, a web page may have been "spidered" but not yet "indexed." Until it is indexed -- added to the index -- it is not available to those searching with the search engine.

Search engine software is the third part of a search engine. This is the program that sifts through the millions of pages recorded in the index to find matches to a search and rank them in order of what it believes is most relevant.

Major Search Engines: The Same, But Different

All crawler-based search engines have the basic parts described above, but there are differences in how these parts are tuned. That is why the same search on different search engines often produces different results. Information on this page has been drawn from the help pages of each search engine, along with knowledge gained from articles, reviews, books, independent research, tips from others and additional information received directly from the various search engines.