How to Succeed with the Search Engines
March 9, 2010
The Cold Hard Facts?..
One of the most important factors in being successful in your business is to learn how to rank high in the search engines. It has been said that the search engines can account for as much as 95% of all the traffic to your website! If you fail to take advantage of the major engines you could be neglecting almost ALL of your targeted traffic!
I don’t know of any business that can afford to throw away that many visitors.
Is your site ready?
There are many factors in which to consider before submitting your website. Have you prepared your website for maximum placement? Each page will need to be submitted separately, and each page will need the following.
- Page Title
- Meta Tags
- Keywords in Header tags
- ALT Tags on all images
- Keyword- filled content
- Keywords as close to the top of each page as possible
- Keywords in links to other pages
- Keywords in outbound links
[Page Title]
Tread Towards A Successful ?Internet Research?
March 3, 2010
Internet is a terrific resource containing billions of web pages dedicated to thousands of topics. Since the amount of information available on the Internet is so vast and mind baffling you may feel lost.
Your expectations from "The Information Superhighway" will crash if you proceed with the general view that exaggerates the ease of Internet usage. What is required is a moderate, balanced approach keeping one’s head on shoulders. Approaching the net should be similar to any other research endeavor i.e. by adopting a formal strategy to maximize results. "Motivation" is the key word here. If you do not have a serious research goal, you cannot dig far.
To make the search a more meaningful exercise and profitable too, you should know where to search and how to search. Be clear about what you are looking for? Be specific in the identification and use of keywords. Being an advanced Internet researcher, you should always use the advanced services when available on a search engine or a directory or a look-up. Have a list of Boolean search strings ready before proceeding on for advanced search in a search engine. For preparing Boolean expressions the following may be used as required:
Common Sense Approach to Search Engine Optimization
February 25, 2010
Most web surfers start their sessions at a search engine or a web directory. There are a number of different methods you can use to capture their traffic and drive it to your site:
Do-It-Yourself Keyword Optimization
February 20, 2010
The first step in a search engine optimization campaign is to choose your keywords or keyphrases for each of your web pages. Keywords are the terms that search engine users type in the search box to conduct a query. The right keywords are those that:
A good position doesn’t depend only on your choice of keywords. It also depends on how well do you position those keywords in your web page, and how many quality external pages link to you. However, choosing the wrong keywords can throw off your entire search engine optimization strategy, so you need to invest a few hours and make sure you do it right.
Let’s start with your homepage. Look at it carefully and write down the words and phrases that best define your site. Try to form two or three word phrases, since competition for one-word keyphrases is fierce, and it is virtually impossible to get a top position for them. That is why, from now on, we will talk about keyphrases, not keywords.
Is This A ?DMOZ Killer? In The Making?
February 13, 2010
Is building a Human-Edited Fully "Democratic" Search Directory Possible?
The independent creators of the non-profit "BuildtheHive" (www.BuildtheHive.com) think so, and I think they’re on to something. Here’s why:
As a webmaster, I’ve long been frustrated by a certain human-edited directory (and you know who I mean) that has inexplicably refused entry of some of my clients, while accepting others without a second glance.
The problem (as I see it) is the same thing that makes these resource potentially great ? human editors.
Let’s face it?for some people, the power of being an editor of their very own category in a major search directory is simply too much for their character. Many a webmaster (myself included) has complained of the abusiveness of some of the editors, both in the way they perform their duties, and (at times) how they interact with the public.
To be sure?being a volunteer editor can be a thankless job, with the number of "Spam" submissions (i.e. those outside the guidelines) far outweighing the legitimate ones.
Search Engines from a Webmaster Perspective
February 5, 2010
By now, virtually every webmaster has heard or read that the major search engines are responsible for 80% or more of the traffic received by most web sites and that most searchers never look beyond the first 20 - 50 search results. Not surprisingly, an entire industry devoted to search engine ranking and search engine optimization (SEO) has sprung up to capitalize on these well known facts.
Tens of thousands of web sites compete to achieve top ranking for their chosen keywords and keyword phrases. We’ve published numerous articles by various SEO experts on linking strategies, optimizing meta tags and page content, and relevant page content. And, undoubtedly, we’ll publish many more. Achieving a top ranking for a particular keyword or phrase is a major accomplishment, but the sad fact is that most web sites will never come close to reaching a top 10, a top 30, or even a top 100, listing in any major search engine.
Is it possible to be listed in the top 10 - 30 search results of a major search engine? Yes, possible, just not very likely for the average web site. It’s a lot like playing the lottery and with the same appeal. Get your site in the top 10 search results and the payoffs are big - you just need to knock out a few million competitors.
Dynamic Pages
January 29, 2010
Dynamic pages and the Search Engines By Clare Lawrence 10th March 2003 Clare is the CEO of Discount Domains Ltd a leading UK Domain name registration service.
Do search engines such as google penalise dynamic pages?
Dynamic pages are used to deliver content from a database to websites ? the advantage being that data can be updated and the contents of pages changed without the need to reload pages etc.
Google publishes guidance notes on its site at http://www.google.com/webmasters/2.html and at http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html
These say that dynamic pages are indexed but that the Googlebot ( Google’s spider ) can overwhelm dynamic sites and therefore the amount of pages indexed are limited
Google recommends:- "If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e. the URL contains a ‘?’ character) be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them small.
How to get dynamic pages indexed
There are ways to get dynamic pages indexed, if the site is relatively small, then create a site map, which has static links to each of the dynamic pages. This gives the search engines a "doorway" to the dynamic pages.
Searching The Internet Without Search Engines
January 24, 2010
The World Wide Web contains more than ten million websites with thousands more being added daily from all over the world, and search engines are tasked with presenting the most relevant pages based on the search criteria entered. Finding a large and popular site like www.irs.gov is easy because it is related to a large agency, but a small site like mine www.consumermortgagereduction.com would be impossible without the use of search engines. The task of finding a website that relates to a specific subject would be almost without the use of the search engine, yet they perform this task with relative ease using tools that may be unknown to most users of search engines.
The first of these tools utilize by search engines are web-crawlers; they search sites based on meta-tags, or the hidden descriptions of the site encoded in the head of the web page. By using web-crawlers to spider websites, the search engine does not have to search the entire webpage to return results, just the first few lines of code. The majority of the code web-crawlers spider is contained in the head section or top of the web page, and search engines use this information to list relevant search terms results.
Google Contest - Nigritude Ultramarine
January 19, 2010
Search engine optimization experts are having fun with Google. Experts, with DarkBlue.com at the helm, are holding a contest to determine how Google really works. Experts are competing, with the goal of optimizing a webpage for a non-sensical phrase: ‘nigritude ultramarine’.
On May 7th, the day the terms ‘nigritude ultramarine’ was announced, typing the phrase into Google generated no search listings. Search engine optimizers hoping to define themselves as industry leaders are all vying for the number one spot. Others see the contest as an opportunity to test theories and experiment without jeopardizing existing traffic. Some webmasters are leery at staking their professional reputation on a contest with an undefined number of participants.
As an added incentive for search engine experts and webmasters to participate and work their magic, DarkBlue.com is giving away an Apple Mini iPod? and a Sony Flat Screen Monitor to anyone who can take their page to #1 for the phrase ‘nigritude ultramarine’. The contest is scheduled to run for two months and will conclude on July 7th, 2004.
Magical Phrase
How To Stay One Step Ahead of the Google Dance
January 13, 2010
It’s taken you 6-months of hard work, constant changes, reading every shred of information on search engine optimization strategy not to mention thousands of dollars trying out web optimization tools and services.
Finally, you have a page rank of 5, you are listed in the top 10 on your major keywords, and you are seeing the benefit - some decent traffic from Google and other search engines.
Then, as quickly as your search engine optimization strategy begines working, it suddenly, and without notice, disappears!
You frantically look for evidence of dropped links, pages not working, it HAS to be something you’ve done!
Well, the truth is, it may not have been anything you did - turns out Google updates their algorithms every few months in an attempt to improve it’s search engine optimization strategy.
In fact, Google has shown that they are not afraid to make major changes impacting tens of thousands of sites, businesses and corresponding sales and profits.
Even more concerning, everything points to the fact they will continue to make changes.
So what can you do to protect your search engine optimization strategy and the resulting traffic critical to the success of your online marketing?
