Friday, November 2, 2007

15 FAQ'S on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

1.What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?
Search Engine Optimisation is the process of preparing a web site in order to achieve search engine rankings that drive traffic to your site. SEO is an ongoing process beginning with the initial optimisation of the site, monthly maintenance of the site, regular evaluation of search results and adjustments to the site.

2. What good is having a web site if it is not being seen?
90% of Internet buyers are turning to search engines to find the products they want. Google alone conducts over 150 million searches a day. In fact, recent studies show that purchasers are about 12 times more likely to buy your products or services after finding your site through a search engine than all other traditional advertising methods combined (including trade shows, print ads, direct mail, radio, and even television)... at a fraction of the cost! Why? Simply put, when a consumer finds you through a search engine they are ready to buy. With traditional forms of media, you are broadcasting a message hoping to reach the right consumer at the right time.

As searchers generally only explore the first two pages in the search results, achieving high rankings on the search engines will make an enormous difference in the amount of visitor traffic your site receives.

3. Why doesn't my web site rank very well in the search engines?
Having your web site rank high in the search engines is a science and the rules for search engine optimisation (SEO) are always changing.

Here are some reasons why you may be having poor ranking:

Incorrect usage of the TITLE tag or no TITLE tag content.
Too many occurrences of the same word in a page (spamming).
Missing H1 and H2 heading tag content.
Missing ALT tag content in your graphic links.
No meaningful content in the first 250 characters on each page.
Less than 200 words per page.
Very few pages on your website.
No links from other web sites to your web site (link popularity).

4. How does the Search Engine find websites?
There are two ways a search engine can find a website to add to its database. The first and most direct method is to accept submissions from web site designers and optimisers. Most search engines have a "submit your URL" section inviting submissions from Internet users.

The second, and least obvious method of finding websites is to send a "spider" to follow each and every link on, off, and through a website. New URLs encountered by the spider will be added to the database. In this way, some search engines will grow very rapidly.

5. How long does it take for SEO results to kick in?
The amount of time required to see results of search engine optimisation work range anywhere from 2 weeks to a few months. This is dependent on how often search engines update their index and subsequently re-rank sites. The Google Dance for example is almost a spectator sport among the SEO community.

6. What is my site ranking dependent on?
Site ranking tends to be "cumulative" and is dependent on the following factors:

The specific keyword phrases (search terms) that have been targeted
The overall competitiveness of your industry - how many players are there
Whether you are targeting a regional, national, or international market
How well ranking is monitored and the site tweaked over time for SEO improvement
The progress of your inbound linking campaign
Number of competitor sites achieving new ranking themselves.

7. Why might I need to have extra elements added to my website?
A search engine spider is an automated program that electronically probes every URL submitted to its database. As the spider is a computer program, it is designed to look for and rank very specific items on each page it probes. If those elements are present, the spider computes a higher ranking than it would if those elements were not present.

8. If these elements are so important, why didn't they get added when my site was originally designed?
Most website designers haven't learned the importance of search engine friendly design. In almost every case we've encountered, the site designer is a highly skilled and creative person whose job is to put your ideas on the web. More often than not, the designers have not received any training in search engine optimisation and don't think about it while pursuing a cool looking design.

Search engines are also constantly changing their ranking criteria. They do this to prevent gross manipulation of their search tools. Often, website designers are not fully up to date with changes at search engines.

9. Does every page of my website really need to be optimised?
In a word - yes. Every page of a website can be a potential entry point or 'landing page' for visitors. You can't predict which page or pages will be ranked the best for specific keywords. As such, each page must be individually optimised too for optimal ranking. Collectively, all pages of your web site reinforce the common "theme" of the site, which also can help boost ranking. Don't assume that your home page is the only important page on your site.

10. Isn't This Something We Can Do Ourselves?
Large amounts of time, attention and expertise are needed to achieve the desired results in such a constantly changing niche industry. The expense of adding personnel and necessary resources alone would quickly outweigh the cost of hiring our company, which is why outsourcing SEO is by far the most popular method. Remember, an SEO company has already established strong, ongoing relationships with all the top search engines, and has experienced professionals who are constantly researching the changes and trends in this dynamic field.

11. Can you guarantee a number #1 position in the search engines?
Nobody can guarantee a number #1 position or specific ranking for your site for a given keyword phrase in the organic search engine results. There are simply too many factors beyond anyone's control - the search engines changing their ranking algorithms, efforts made by competitors, and new sites being added to the Web.

Obtaining a specific ranking is analogous to managing a portfolio. Your financial advisor will do their best to monitor the stock market and other indicators and to make sure your portfolio is managed to the best of their abilities. However, your advisor cannot guarantee that your portfolio will be at a specific value or even that the amount will be up at all by a given date.

12. It's been several months and my website finally shows up in Google but it's ranked in the hundreds. Why is that?
It's not always easy to get better search engine rankings. In fact, search engine optimisation is part science and part art. Search engines continually change their algorithms and tweak their rules for ranking. It is possible that Google does not fully read your page due to structural issues, your web site (or at least individual web pages) could be lacking in meaningful content, no significant web sites link to you, your web site is too small to be of any value to people searching for your topic, or any other range of problems.

Search engines may be flooded with web sites on a given topic, making it more difficult to achieve higher rankings. As such, a good search engine optimiser will look for a niche to exploit. For example, consider whether your web site has greater appeal to a local, national, or international region.

13. My web site did not get accepted last time I submitted to the search engines... why?
Search Engine listings are not guaranteed to everyone who posts a web site to the Internet. Search engines are for-profit businesses and have the right to refuse to list any site for virtually any reason. We ensure all bases are covered and all necessary elements are present before submitting the finalised site to the search engines or directories.

14. Why Should I Choose to Outsource SEO?
To achieve a high ranking web site, you have to know exactly the most effective META tag design formula, best web copy writing techniques, keep track of current search engine ranking algorithms, know what format to submit the site in to every engine and how often to resubmit the site. You also need to know whether your site is technically compatible with search engine robots, what types of pages the engines will accept and which will be barriers to ranking, plus what sort of overall "relevancy score" your site will receive from each engine you submit to.

Not only that, but once you're ranking highly, you have to monitor your progress and adjust your tags every now and then to ensure you stay up above your competitors on all engines for your major search phrases. These are all crucial steps to a high ranking, but very time consuming and not your core business!

15. How Do You Choose the Best Keywords?
The first step in our SEO campaign is to develop your Keyword Profile. Based on your initial input, we will use a combination of experience and software programs to generate a list of the most effective and well-searched keywords in your industry. We then work together to refine this list and compile the list of keywords and phrases that will be most beneficial to your product or services. You know your business and we know ours. We know how important it is to work together to generate the most effective Keyword Profile possible.



Article Source: http://www.simplysearch4it.com/author-articles/11564/1.html

Latent Semantic Indexing In SEO

Indexing has changed as search algorithms have evolved. At present if you enter a search query into Google search and the websites displayed are somewhat optimized to an exact word or phrase. As a continual effort to "improve"(?) search Google has employed a form of "latent" semantics into their indexing algorithm - and it's called LSI.

What is LSI? It's another form of indexing that supposedly moves Google search closer to human search parameters. It will assist in finding websites that are based on the theme of the site instead of whether or not the exact word or phrase is repeated on the page.

Search engines may further adopt Latent Semantic Indexing to prevent a rigid response that values keyword-loading as opposed to assessing meaningful content.

LSI seems to have had some effect. Some websites that had impressive links based on a keyword have seen their pages drop in the rankings. Other pages with more variance in their inbound links have moved up in the ranks.

SEO must respond to LSI with better content and quality inbound links. SEO can no longer depend on keyword density and placement or link-farming.

Content For LSI is better if naturally written and worded. LSI supposedly moves closer to assaying "natural instinct" of the writer of content. Using different tenses, plural and singular forms, as well as synonyms may well be rewarded.

Your link profile should no longer needs thousands of links with the same anchor text. Now you can look for relevant and similar terms and improve your link profile by gaining links using these as your anchor text.
What this offers searchers? LSI offers some advantages over earlier form of indexing. In example, LSI will recognize that the word "pickle" in "dill pickle" is not related to searches for terms like "metallic pickle process" and is instead related to food. LSI will supposedly give more accurate results as well as a broader range of pages on a particular topic.

Google has been pushing many changes in search engine function and latent semantic indexing is one of the latest. Yahoo and MSN may adopt LSI over time. This effects your website's success in SEO. With natural content including keywords and keyword alternatives, and a link profile that is diversified for a number of related keywords then your rank may begin to improve.



Article Source: http://www.simplysearch4it.com/author-articles/728/1.html

The Absolute basics of SEO

Search engine optimization is the process of maximizing the ranking of you site in search engine listings. The most important factors to consider to achieve a high ranking are: the keywords you use, your title, your description, the text of your site, and the links others provide to your site.

To begin selecting keywords, consider what words and phrases the people you are trying to reach will be searching on. When placing keywords in your keyword tag, it is best to use phases rather than single words. Almost all single words are in very widespread use, thus will not tend to produce high rankings. Keyword phrases can be better tailored to your business. Also, since phrase searches produce fewer results, people are more likely to search on them. It is also a good idea to produce a list of keyword phrases for every page of your site. If you must include difficult to spell words, it is a good idea to include some common misspellings of these words as well.

The title is just as important, if not more important, than your keywords. Most search engines place the highest level of importance on the words found in the title when calculating the ranking. You should place your most important keyword phrases first in your title, as some search engines limit the number of characters you can use. Make your title a readable sentence, as this is the first text that will appear for your listing on the results page. One thing you should avoid doing is simply listing keywords. This could be regarded by the search engine as keyword spamming, and may lower your search ranking, or even get your listing removed from the site. As with keywords, it is a good idea to give each page a unique title.

In your description you should once again make use of your best keyword phrases. In this case, you can use more of them, since search engines will give you typically around 1024 characters for the description, while they will give you only around 50 to 80 for the title. Again, place your keywords as close to the beginning of your description as makes sense.

In the text of your site you should make use of, yes, you've guessed it, your keyword phrases. Also include any text you have used in other tags, such as meta tags, alt tags, and headings. Having a lot of content helps as well. A minimum of 200 words per page is recommended. Having many pages of content also increases your rankings.

Having many other sites link to you is another good way to increase your search rankings. Both the links themselves and the increase traffic which results will help. Also, having bloggers link to your site is a good idea.

Although these practices will boost your rankings, there are certain design elements that can interfere with your search rankings. These include frames, dynamic URLs, Flash, using image maps for navigation, and using javascripts for navigation. Also, there are certain practices that search engines regard as spamming, and these practices will get you permanently removed from the site. These include using keywords in your meta tags that do not relate to the content of your page, using multiple instances of the same tag, and listing keywords in the text of your site.

This is just the briefest introduction to search engine optimization. One book available on this topic is Search Engine Visibility, by Shari Thurow. Software packages that can assist you with SEO tasks include Bruce Clay's SEOToolSET and Web CEO's Web CEO. If you prefer to have someone else do your SEO for you, Marinerblue is ready to help you for free with your .ws domain.


Article Source: http://www.simplysearch4it.com/author-articles/5986/1.html

About SEO for 2007

When Google is buying into radio and television advertising that should tell you something about SEO generally, and in particular for organizations who are not web-only entities.

Mass marketing advertisers would have used various strategies for spending on ads - including telephone directory, radio or television, newspaper, magazine, billboards, etc. Each of these media provides some form of statistics showing their effectiveness.

In a multi-format approach to advertising and marketing each company will have to analyze the effectiveness of dollars spent in each medium, OR combinations of those media. The idea that groups of these media will band together to offer competitve prices versus Google is a given. Whether any of these multimedia ad groups, some combining with Google or other search engines, can offer more bang for the buck than a first year marketing student can put together is a major question.

Major Ad and Marketing firms know how to squeeze a buck, if necessary, but their advice is not usually free. Google was able to grab resources allocated for print this past year when they dabbled in print ads campaigns. Effective or just making their presence known?

News organizations have been losing ads on and off for years as each new medium was invented, then perfected, then improved. National and International organizations can expect more multimedia prepackaging offers. Congressional investigations of PPC schemes and various lawsuits make it mandatory for ads buyers to keep it cheap and keep it flexible when they plan spending. They will have to read their own stats sheets, not Google's, newspapers, or anybody else's.

Google will the most prominent example for 2007 of a techie overselling their services and their stock prices. The message should be clear by now - only the truly legit tech corps survive. In my opinion, any corp that isn't user-friendly is dead meat before the wave is over, no matter how many investors they have hypnotized.

As Google focuses on quick profits an maintaining dominance - they make themselves a big and stupid target for corps like Yahoo and the newer breed of search engines that focus on getting it RIGHT.

While Google is trying to push you into all it's favorite traps they lose friends, create enemies, and have to lean heavier on their imagined mystique with their investors.

Video, voip, internet voicemail will all become a standard component of online communication. Video particularly will revolutionize news and movies online.
Yahoo Publisher Network, YouTube, Flickr and distributed podcasts will only partially replace professionally developed network broadcasts, except in the niche and nonprofessional areas.

SEO will be forced to adopt billing that is based on the success of a campaign as opposed to flat fees charged up front or on a monthly basis.

Microsoft Vista users will hopefully get a Patch in 2007 but they may need a new computer before then, and maybe a bigger one to hold the big Patch.


Article Source: http://www.simplysearch4it.com/author-articles/728/1.html

Internet Traffic and SEO Techniques

You might be wandering the reasons your web site is not getting much internet traffic. After all your web site took lots of financial and human resources, but unfortunately like so many web sites, it is quite unknown and as a result it does not get enough internet traffic to make it financially viable.

Did you know that about 80 percent of all web site traffic originates from search engines? Yes, it is true! Listing near the top page of search engines and obtaining the attention of your target audience should be a main priority for any web site internet promotion.

And the good news about this is that improving a web site position in search engine pages may be done for free. How? Using search engine optimization (SEO) techniques.

There are many ways to promote a web site. Some promotions are paid and some are free. Among the free ones, the search engine optimization techniques enable web sites to become search engine friendly. In other words, it makes website pages to accept the search engine crawler in a friendly way. These techniques will be some of the steps one will have to use to obtain a better position in search engine's pages, when searching for specific keywords, related to services or products offered by a web site.

Search engine optimization steps for a web page:

Title:

The html Title tag is a very important element and must include the most important keywords or phrases, which best represent the products or services offered by the web page. It should not contain more than 60 characters.

Keywords:

The html meta Keyword tag should have all the keyword phrases which best represents the products or services offered by the web page. Avoid repeating keywords and bad use of capital letters. It should not contain more than 250 characters.

Description:

The html meta Description tag is a description of the web page, which will be displayed by the search engine. Make sure it contains keywords phrases. Avoid repeating keywords and bad use of capital letters. It should not contain more than 200 characters.

Keywords in Headings:

Keywords in Headings tags (h1) will be interpreted by search engines as being an important keyword relevant to the web page, and it should be looked for and indexed by the search engines.

Web page text:

It is a good practice to include informative text one every page, using natural language and appropriate keywords. It should contain more than 200 words. Informative text should be placed in the html Body section of the web page.

Keywords in Alt Tags:

Every html picture "img" tag should contain an ALT tag with an appropriate description. Keywords should always be used when appropriate.

Keywords in Anchor Tags:

Every html hypertext link "a href " should contain a TITLE tag with an appropriate description. Keywords should always be used when appropriate.

Robots.txt file:

Make sure there is a robots.txt file in you web site directory. This is a text file created by the webmaster, which will guide the search engine´s crawler when indexing a web site.

There are some cases in which one might not want to have some web pages indexed. This way thru the use of robots.txt, one will have control over which pages will be indexed and made available to the search engines.

User-agent: +
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /data/

HTML code validation:

Search engine's crawlers become more efficient when indexing web pages with no html errors. Beware that some html errors can make search engine crawlers to give up indexing web pages. So it is recommended for those web pages to be indexed, there should be no html errors.

Links:

Links are very important to search engines. The quality of links and whether it is reciprocal or not, are important factors in evaluating the importance of a web page. Links from web sites with higher page ranks are a plus.

Registering with Directories and Search Engines:

It is very important the registration of a website with directories and search engine web sites. It is a way of telling the world that your web site exists. Avoid using automatic search engine/directory registration.

Search engine optimization has become a very important set of procedures which helps web sites to become more relevant to search engines. To obtain an increase in internet traffic will take some time. It probably will take some kind of additional promotion too. But anybody in need of higher internet traffic, free search engine optimization might be considered his first option.

Roberto Sedycias
IT Consultant

This article is under GNU FDL license and can be distributed without any previous authorization from the author. However the author´s name and all the URL´s (links) mentioned in the article and biography must be kept.

Article Source: http://www.simplysearch4it.com/author-articles/11033/1.html


Benefits of Articles Submission in SEO

Article submission is a great resource for increasing traffic to your website and also getting one way links back to your site. There are a lot of article directories on the web that accept articles for a variety of categories. It is important however, to pick a category that directly relates to the content of your website. This is an effective marketing method referred to as targeting visitors to your web site.

It is also important to understand when submitting your articles, that a massive amount of articles are submitted to popular article sites and directories. For this reason, only some of the articles that are submitted actually generate a significant amount of traffic to their respective websites. The most important question to ask yourself is: what unique information can I provide that will be of the most value to my readers?

Here are some additional important things to consider before you begin your article-submission endeavors in order attract readers to your articles and ultimately get a large amount of traffic to your website:

1) Provide valuable content! Always be asking yourself, would I want to read this? Then take it one step further and ask yourself: after reading this article, would I feel enlightened in such a way that I would be motivated to do something that I would not otherwise have known how to do? By answering this question, you are evaluating what is referred to as your "call to action". Good writing influences the reader's behavior.

2) Your article's content should not be too long, so keep it short. If you have large article content, then try to split them into two or more separate articles.

3) Try to keep your article title short as well, and make sure it is directly related to the contents of the article.

4) Make sure to keep your article title very close to the main keywords of your website as well. As per my experience, keep article titles short and close to the keywords of your website, Google will place far more value to the article's contents in comparison to your competitor's websites with the same keywords as you.

For example: If you had a web site related to hemorrhoids diseases and we wanted to write an article for this site, then if we put our article title "Hemorrhoids" or any other relevant keywords, then Google wiil give more value to our articles as well as our website in comparison to other related web sites, whose articles consist of vague, meaningless titles.

5) As most article directories do not accept articles with URLs or hyperlinks in the article contents, be sure to not violate this rule or your article will usually not be considered. They do however usually allow you to include your company name and web address in the "about the author" section that is included with each article submission.

So then what is the advantage of article submission for the SEO work of your website?

1) Great sources of getting one way link.
2) Generate interest in the content of your website so as to attract new, unique visitors.
3) Best alternative to link exchange and link exchange networks.
4) Save time in getting back-links to your website instead of directory submission and link exchanging.
5) Some article submission and PR web sites allow people to subscribe to specific categories related to their web site as RSS feeds. If a website subscribes to the RSS feed for the category that you have submitted your article to, your article and back link will not only show up on the website that you have submitted to, it will also automatically appear on all of the websites that subscribe to the RSS feed of that category. However, only articles that have unique and informative content are chosen to be included in these RSS feeds, so make sure to follow the directions we have provided for you here.


About the Author

Vision Media Corporation is a Las Vegas & Nevada based marketing, software, design, and business development firm specializing in new approaches to information technology and it's relationship to marketing strategies and business models. For more information regarding search engine optimization, as well as the SEO services offered by Vision Media Corporation, browse to our site: Las Vegas Website Design & Internet Marketing Services