How to Make a Title Tag that Search Engines Will Love
July 28, 2008
Making the following changes to your title tag can help improve ranking and increase targeted traffic to your website:
Include keyword phrases in your title tag:
Think of a title tag as the name above a shop. Imagine you are walking down a busy street with shops on either side of you. However every shop window is boarded up and all that is visible is its name. You mean to purchase a new Hi-Fi system and need to locate a suitable store. You look at all the names but are getting confused as to which one is for you. All of a sudden you see a store with ‘Hi-Fi and Electrical’ in its name. You enter and purchase your spanking new Hi-Fi system, but it is a bit expensive. And little did you know but the store next door also sold Hi-Fi systems but for a lot cheaper. However its name did not indicate this. In fact its name sounded more like a jewellery shop than an electrical store.
A search engine is rather like the shopper in the above example. It sees the title on each web page and determines whether this would be a good result to return based on its text. If you search for ‘Hi-Fi’ it is highly likely that some of the results returned will have ‘Hi-Fi’ in their title.
Link Popularity Explained and How To Build Links
July 21, 2008
Link popularity is the single most influential factor for determining how well a web site will perform in search engine rankings. A web site’s link popularity is computed from the number and more importantly, the quality of links pointing to a web site.
Link Popularity history
To gain a better understanding of link popularity it is useful to know why it became so crucial for search engine rankings. In the past a web page’s ranking was determined, amongst other factors, by the number of keyword occurences within ‘on-page’ elements i.e. in page text, META tags, title tag.
When web developers learned that they could trick a search engine to return their web pages by cramming keywords into their pages the search engines had to get a bit smarter. They were using ‘on-page’ elements to determine relevance so it was only natural that they would look to elements out of direct control of the web page creator i.e. ‘off-page’ elements. Search engines made the assumption that the greater the number of links from other sites pointing to a web site, the more popular the web site is and therefore a more quality resource. This worked nicely in theory but in practice it was also to be abused.
5 Things to Keep an Eye on in the SEO World in 2005…
July 15, 2008
After the latest PR update at Google and MSN’s beta search going live, there is one thing for certain in 2005: the world of search is in for some major changes. There has been growing speculation around the SEO world that reciprocal linking is a thing of the past. Rumors are abound that PR means less and less, if anything. Bill Gates came out of his cave to say that "Today’s search is nothing" and that it won’t be that way for long. There are quiet rumblings in the SEO back alleys of a new, state-of- the-art search engine currently indexing the internet. Websites are dropping off the face of the planet. And we’re all left to sit here and put together the pieces. So what is in store for 2005?
1) Reciprocal links, while not becoming totally dead, are decreasing in value, and there will most likely be an algorithm update to lessen their importance. The original thought process behind the importance of a link was that it was seen as a "vote" for the linked-to site. Now that reciprocal links are everywhere, it is hardly a great way to count "votes" for a website. Reciprocal linking will continue around the internet, although the amount of people who try to get away with one-way links (by never getting back to you once you’ve added their link) will increase significantly. This will, of course, be an attempt to acquire one-way links, which brings us to our next subject….
Google vs. Yahoo — How To Rank High On Each One
July 8, 2008
Google likes incoming links, especially links from high-ranking, on-topic pages that include keywords in the link text. Google doesn’t like over-optimized, high keyword densities and over use of keywords in headings, etc. like they use to.
Yahoo, on the other hand, looks at on-page factors more, such as keyword density, keywords in headings, etc. That is where the problem comes in.
Of course, they both look at everyting, but keep these two very important points in mind when you are trying to optimize your site.
When you search both Google and Yahoo for a keyword phrase, you will usually find a BIG difference in the Search Engine Results Pages or “Serps” as it is usually called. Serps just means the list of websites that show up when you do a search on any of the search engines.
Back to Yahoo and Google. Here’s why the results are different and in a nutshell what you have to do to rank high on each one of them.
Links from other websites are the most important thing to Google. The higher the ranking of the actual page your link is on the better. Remember it is NOT the ranking of the Home page of the site you are getting the link from, but the ranking of the page your link is actually on that counts.
Tips On Optomizing Your Website For Search Engines
July 3, 2008
I wish to give a few little tips, about optimizing. You may find it quite useful, depending on the type of website you have.
This is it; basically, when you optimize a website, you first want to enter at least 30 keywords into the ‘head’ of your web page. No problem there.
The next step in optimizing is that you must put each of your keywords into the text of your web page at least 4 times!
This is one area where your web page sinks or swims in the search engine ’spidering’ process. This is where one must get, er.. creative.
We’ve all seen those web pages that are about a mile long and so wordy, that you kind of loose track as to what the heck they are talking about. Well, optimizing is what that’s about. That and testimonials, which are a good thing to have, but most experts agree that you’ve got to get right down to the point and not loose your reader.
If this page is in a surf exchange, you’re expecting your viewer to read a mile long page in about 30 seconds. Trying to get all your key words into your ad text 4 times, can make it read a bit funny.
Google: The Ultimate Web Writer?s Style Guide
June 26, 2008
Indulge me for a moment.
Forget that Google is a search engine. Just for a moment, imagine it is a style guide. A very different kind of style guide.
Instead of this particular style guide being written as a static book by an expert or two, it is written by studying the searching and browsing habits of hundreds of millions of web users.
Get the idea? Not a search engine. A style guide. A constantly evolving style guide that works from its insights into how people use and read web sites.
A style guide that puts the visitor first, puts their needs ahead of the academic opinions of experts.
A style guide that automatically rewards sites that serve their readers the best.
If we study Google not as a search engine, but as a style guide, what does it tell us about how we should write our web pages?
>> 1. Make the subject of each page absolutely clear.
As visitors arrive at your site, regardless of the entry page, the first question in their minds is, "Am I in the right place? Will I find what I want here? Can I achieve what I want to achieve here?"
Link Building Services
June 19, 2008
In today scenario when we talk about Search Engine Optimization, we also talk about one of the most important aspect of SEO, which is Link Building. But there are different types, aspects and limitations of Link Building, which would be discussed now under
1.Types of Link Building: I would be explaining this factor in a more understandable manner with giving some examples with Site1, Site2 and Site3.
a)One Way Linking: One Way Linking is a type of Link Building where a site links to another site without getting a link back
Example: Site1 links to Site2 One of the best ways of generating One Way Links is Directory Submissions
You can submit your site in different free directories like Dmoz, Yahoo Directory (Paid Also) and many others
Limitations of One-Way Linking
One of the most desired limitations of One-Way linking is time Consuming process and the confirmation of getting listed in Directories is not fixed
b)Two Way Linking: Mostly known as Reciprocal Linking, this is one of the most effective and fast method of creating quality incoming links towards your site. Two Way Linking is process of exchanging links between 2 sites of similar theme. (As per latest Google Semantic Indexing)
All About Google
June 15, 2008
If you read The Search Engine Showdown, you know Google is my favourite search engine. Why? Google always offers the most results for any given search (they currently have over 8 billion pages indexed), it’s faster than the Audi Quattro we test drove this morning, and 9 times out of ten, in my experience, all the front page results are relevant to my search. In fact, I usually find what I’m looking for within the first few sites listed. I also really respect the fact that two college kids started it (kinda like Abalone Designs!) and that those two college kids seem not to have forgotten where they came from. If you check out the images at Google’s press center (http:// www.google.com/press/images.html) and scroll down to the Everyday Life Inside Google section, you’ll get a feeling that life at Google is fun.
Google is the most used search engine on the web. In May, 2004, 36.8% of all searches on the web were done using Google. Also during that month, Google powered 54% of all searches done on the web (Read more about these figures here).
The Search Engine Showdown
June 8, 2008
If you’re anything like me, you have a favourite search engine and you’re loyal to it. You never use any others (which made this research difficult for yours truly), insist yours is the be-all and end-all and you even go so far as to deny any shortcomings it may have. But is your search engine truly the best? Inspired by a great article at the BBC News (BBC News: Search Wars), we decided to compare the major search engines. Here’s what we found.
We chose the search term “real estate fiji” because it’s a competitive industry and geographically specific. We also searched with the same phrase, misspelled to see if the search engine would suggest the correct spelling.
Initially loading the search page for Google is lightning fast.
The look is clean and easy to understand.
Search time was 0.15 seconds.
The search yielded 1,190,000 results.
All results on the first page were relevant.
Spellcheck was available.
Yahoo!
Initially loading the search page for Yahoo! is a little bit slower than Google, but still fast.
Search time was 0.18 seconds.
The search yielded 711,000 results.
Your Online Home-Based Business Can Lead To Search Engine Stress
June 3, 2008
As a member of several search engine optimization forums, I have recently noticed (especially since Yahoo recently decided to try their hand at competing with Google) that the stress level of many webmasters has gone way up. This applies not only to webmasters involved in Internet-based home businesses, but to webmasters in general.
Additionally, it seems that many people that are in the business of search engine optimization (SEO) are, with good reason, going completely bonkers. As Google came on the scene in 1998 and quickly dominated the search business, website optimization became largely a game of shooting at a single target, namely, pleasing Google…for all intents and purposes, Google became the “800 pound gorilla” of the search engine business.
Since the advent of search engines (particularly Google) spawned the whole SEO business, I guess its only fair that the search engine industry can once again turn the SEO business on its ear, and it seems now to be sort of a cat and mouse (not desktop) relationship that can get really interesting as we move forward.
Not only are there now several viable players (most notably Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask Jeeves) in the search engine business, but they are all adopting different and frequently changing algorithms for determining the ranking positions for websites.
