Monday, October 29, 2007

Search Engine Optimization Techniques

One of the thing I get asked a lot is how to get a website higher in the SERPs. Well, it is going to take a lot of time, effort, and patience.

There are two elements to SEO - what you do on your website and what you do off your website. Let's talk about things you can do on your website to improve SERP results.

1. Hierarchal Design

The web pages you create should be in a hierarchal design with your home page at the top of the hierarchy. Every page of your website should be reachable by at least one static link.

2. Quality Content

You have to have a lot of quality content on your websites about your particular niche. For real estate websites, this can be achieved by news articles, blog threads, events calendar, and thousands of property detail pages.

3. Keywords

You have to use keywords in your content that related to your particular niche. If you just use the keyword "real estate" you probably are not going to rank very high in the SERPs. However, if you use "Holland Michigan Real Estate" for your key phrase, that gives a specific location. Chances are if you have a great website about Holland Michigan Real Estate, then you are going to rank high in the SERPs. By the way, you should make sure you have your keywords in a the keyword meta tag. Try to limit yourself to 10 keyword phrases.

4. Sitemap

You should have a sitemap on your website. This helps crawlers learn about the structure of your site and makes every section of your website reachable. I would make one sitemap for your users and another XML sitemap for the crawlers. Make sure you submit the XML sitemap to google and yahoo using the webmaster tools.

5. Avoid Black Hat Techniques

There are several black hat techniques such as keyword stuffing and hidden text that can temporarily give you a boost in the SERPs. However, in the long run, your website will be penalized and be even lower in the SERPs than you started out with. Stay away from these techniques.

6. Include a ROBOTS.TXT file on your site.

This tells the crawlers what parts of your site can be crawled. You should avoid making your member and admin sections crawlable.

7. Dynamic Content

Most real estate website use dynamic content. If you use dynamic content, keep your URL strings short and do not use session IDs in your URL strings.

8. Linking to other sites

Make sure you only link to sites you trust. Do not link to link farms or websites that have poor quality. Do not create a link farm yourself either. Linking to sites related to yours is good, but watch out for sites that are not directly related. A couple of these links will not hurt you, but if you get carried away it might.

9. Relevant Title Tags / Description Tag

Make sure your keywords appear in your title tag and description meta tag. Check out this home page to see how it is done: Holland Michigan Real Estate

Now, let's talk about what you can do outside of your website to improve SERP rankings.

1. Backlinks

You need to get as many backlinks as possible. However, you should pace yourself. Google knows the rate to which you get backlinks. If you increase this rate to fast, alarms go off and your website may get penalized. Plan on doing about 1 hour a day getting backlinks. Do not spend all day doing this.

2. Directories

Submit your website to directories and lots of them including dmoz and yahoo directory.

3. RSS feeds

There are a lot of RSS feed directories out there. If you got a RSS feed, submit it to these directories. This will increase traffic to your website.

4. Social Bookmarking

Submit articles to websites such as digg.com and propeller. Submit videos to websites such as youtube and google. People will bookmark your articles and videos. This will drive traffic to your site.

5. News Releases

Submit a news release about your website.

I hope you enjoyed this article. I may write another SEO article in the future with more advanced techniques.



Search Engine Friendly Pages - The Way To A Crawler's Heart

As the employment trend is shifting towards self-employment. To be a success in whatever field an entrepreneur is in, he must have the best marketing tools. One of which is a business website. Many business owners are faced with technical dilemmas, caused by the further merging of the business industry with the Information Technology field. Because of this, they outsource the development of their websites.

To enable people or internet users to find YOU, one important consideration in building a website is SEO. It is a process involving strategies to increase quantity as well as quality of traffic to a website. Targeted traffic is what the search engines bring to a website, through algorithmic, natural or organic search results.

Visitors to the site are the lifeblood of the website's existence.

Traffic means business and dominant contributors to this are major search engines like Google, MSN, and Yahoo. Thus, when blueprinting or designing a web page, outsourcing services should ensure Search Engine friendly pages to obtain higher rankings that would lead to more people clicking on the link to your site and more probable sales.

Primary search engines utilize programs or automated scripts that are more known as web crawlers or web spiders. These robots browse through the World Wide Web, methodically indexing web content, checking links and validating html codes. Information is stored and the websites that manage up-to-date content are pulled up into a listing when people type in one relevant keyword/ keyword phrase.

For your website/ web page to get indexed easily, the following are some of the techniques you could apply when designing on your own:

• Avoid the application of frames. The lengthy and complex codes used to create frames causes disarray among search engine spiders making them skip the site and makes bookmarking a lot more difficult.

• Use CSS or Cascading Style Sheets instead of bombarding html codes to style a page. Its efficacy lies in the elimination of redundant html tags that confuses the crawlers and makes page loading faster.

• Meta Tag use and positioning are one factor noted by web crawlers in deciding whether or not to index a site or how frequent they would visit it. So make sure to use relevant meta tags appropriately.

• Flash animations or images are not the best way to contain very vital information. Aside from slow page upload, search engine crawlers only index text in your source code. A good way to use images to represent text are when displaying email contact addresses, as these could be kept private from other bots accumulating unsolicited email lists.



Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Aweng_Moral-Basco

Web Design And Development Vs Search Engine Optimization

Online promotion and search engine optimization is the in thing in the speedy growing internet world. Get an online promotion service for your website through a leading search engine optimization company and your website will be ranking high with the desired keywords. Although, an SEO service provider who is also accountable will cost you heavens, but you will certainly not mind if you are blessed with thousands of visitors per day.

However, do all highly ranked websites are the best providers in their field? Not essentially. So what are the options and how does one can find a GENUINE WEB DEISGN & DEVLOPMENT COMPANY?

While you are thinking of building a website, what would be your requirements? Let see, you would need an enticing website that is also user friendly and eloquent. You may require some dynamic features and therefore need appropriate development resources. Now comes another point worth consideration.

You have spent hundreds of dollars building a website and then pass it to a SEO service provider, who further recommends a number of changes on the website to make it search engine friendly and you end up re building your website, spending hundreds of dollars once again. Why not get a service that provides a search engine compliant web design & development.

Summing up, a typical web design and development requirements, the following are the most common of all:

1. A website design that goes with the latest trend e.g. web 2.0, div based etc.
2. Your website subject e.g. do you want to sell a product, is the website educational kind, revenue source etc.
3. The development requirements & details. Note down each single point/features that comes to your mind, may it be the simplest thing, while sending across the development needs to the company. This is to ensure that there is minimum space for ambiguity.
4. The website should be search engine compliant
5. Primary search engine optimization on the website e.g. unique title & metadata for all pages, optimum keyword density on pages, search engine friendly navigation and website architecture etc.

As of now, this has been apparent that web design & development and search engine optimization goes together. None is beneficial in absence of another. A clumsy and unimpressive website with high traffic will not get leads. Neither an awesome but unfamiliar website will earn revenues.

If you have not taken advantages of the emerging concept of search engine optimization, try to get some by exploring the www.synapseindia.com another web design & development company where information is available in abundance. You can further get reference of search engine optimization company to give you the full information on a search engine compliant website design & development. You may also find a brief detail on the service that may result far-fetched to connect you with your overseas clients and customers. Broaden your wings with the search engine compliant website design & development to reach to your ultimate customers.

Mridu Sinha is working with a leading web design & development company. While dealing with the clients, she has documented some typical problems that a prospective customer who wishes to design or develop a website comes through.



Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mridu_Sinha

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Turn big via SEO New York

Who does not want to have a great and profitable business? However, most of the times, they lag behind because they do not opt for information tools like getting their business advertised on a website or even going full fledged online for a better business deal. This happens due to the unawareness of online business strategies that can actually elevate a business on a bigger platform. Well, if these are your concern, then it is high time to consult SEO New York for getting your business optimized on internet. Many business ventures are going online, and it is a better way to get attracted at one go! What say!

Therefore, it has become necessary to be well versed with the ways of the web world for ever running business. Now you must be wondering that how can you achieve a way to a profitable business? Well, the answer is simple, in today’s time web is not just used as a tool for entertaining you, but also plays a crucial role in executing work perfectly. In fact, it serves as a guide for getting significant information on various topics, including social or non-social issues. Moreover, internet has shown the best results in the field of business and promotions. Therefore, if you want to make it big then turn to SEO New York, as it will take you ladders ahead in your online business deals with its marketing strategies. It utilizes a variety of pay per click, affiliate and content management methods.

You can say that it is the right medium to approach various people living in different time zones at one go. Yes, you got it right; with the help of SEO New York you can have people from all over the world who can be interested in buying your products. Search engine optimization plays a crucial role in the world of online business. You can find millions of people getting glued to the internet for various types of information that is helpful in the growth of business. In fact, for you, SEO in New York is an ideal choice as it not only designs websites that are user friendly but also takes your website amongst the best search engines; moreover, it has the ability to market products and services online by driving maximum traffic to your website.

However, creating the website only will not solve your purpose; the content has to be fresh and relevant as well as catchy. Otherwise, no user will visit your website for business purpose or for gaining knowledge on your products. Hence, it is important to impart significant information that can be easily understood by the users. You can say that the larger the traffic, the greater the profits and benefits. Further, it will make your business profitable. If you want to get a higher search engine visibility then you need the help of SEO New York. It is economically reasonable too, as it promotes your goods and services. So hurry up and grab the opportunity for the best available deal.



http://www.articlebliss.com/Article/Turn-big-via-SEO-New-York/158105

Friday, October 26, 2007

Search Engine Optimization – The Right Use!

Bothered that your website lacks visitors and traffic? Concerned that there isn’t much feedback? This may be because your search engine optimization needs some fine-tuning. There are many ways to drive the traffic to a website but search engine optimization still rules the roost. Tweaking the SEO of your webpage is one of the prime ways to improve the traffic. Also an improved SEO leads to a great usability by the users to find your website in the list that appears in the search engine.

By enhancing your Search Engine Optimization for your webpage, you will:

• Advance your page’s rankings
• Enhance traffic to your webpage
• Cope with genuine visitors who are interested in your products and services

Here are a few factors that would help drive traffic
The Right Keyword: - Determining the right keyword that describes your website in a word is of primary importance. The word should reflect the content of the page the visitor would want to know about. These words should be closely considered as this form a very important part of the search. Also the keyword that is selected should appear in all the primary locations on the webpage including the first few paragraphs of a page, headers etc.

Effective use of Directories: - By submitting the website to search engine friendly directories would help in effective ranking of the websites. The website should carry at least three descriptions with varied titles. This would increase the number of backlinks for your website. Backlinks determine the popularity or importance that your website possesses.

Relevance of Content:- Choice of the right words and necessary phrases is an important step as the content will induce many users the urge to click your website. Kindling their interest should be the main objective when the content of the webpage is decided. Linking blogs that advertise the link of your product and service with the website will also help in improving the ranking of your page.

The right use of Article Directories: - Choosing an appropriate title and designing articles and submitting them to the article directories also form an integral part of SEO ranking. The top rated article directories have to be listed to submit your website as that would be more popular among the users. Backlinks should be included in the website for effective search results. This would result in book marking your webpage for further reading or linking your page to the user’s website. This would only result in more traffic.

Effective use of Link Exchanges: - There are many webpage owners who are open to exchanging links to share your link to their page and vice versa. This is an effective way to increase traffic in both the web pages. Search Engine Optimization forums provide this opportunity to exchange links and send testimonials about your webpage.

The business of creating webpage and to make it effective among the users has a lot of challenges. By applying these rules of the SEO will give your webpage a better chance to be viewed, picked and bookmarked.


http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/Search-Engine-Optimization---The-Right-Use-/332677

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Seo Salary

A set of salary estimates for SEO people. I understand the marketing value of having an “SEO Salary” post, but I don’t see the point for people working in SEO. If you have to argue about your salary level using outside references, you need Challenger Gray & Christmas or Robert Half or something based on data. But the article did remind me of the importance of staying aware of the real money in SEO work.

As I read, I see that Firm SEO work is quite different from Independent SEO or in-house SEO work. According to Rand’s descriptions, Firm SEO (like his SEO company) is a group of people working together on client projects, guided by an SEO Boss. Rand admits he hires inexperienced talent and the salaries he pays are “on the low side”. This is the opposite of what I do in my own SEO consulting, and what my better clients do with their competitive web and Internet projects. I am not an SEO Firm, so again this is perhaps highlighting yet another a different perspective of the unusual industry we call Search Engine Optimization (SEO).


Steve Jobs once said something like “A people hire A people; B people hire C people” and I have always carried that around in my head. I often see it in action. The best people tend to want the best people to work for them. Less-than-the-best often hire people “lesser” than them, for what I suppose is a myriad of reasons. Please note I am not suggesting Rand is hiring people lesser than he is (nor am I suggesting that Rand might be an “A” person). I am simply saying that his description of Firm SEO is opposite of my SEO consulting experience, where the better clients seek out the best SEOs, the best web designers, the best developers, and the best marketers to work on projects. In fact, more times than not, my clients have experienced extreme frustration dealing with “agencies”. From advertising agencies to web design agencies, the expertise and dedication of the individuals assigned by that agency to the projects turns out to be significantly below the caliber of the leaders of that “agency”. Sometimes we collectively wonder if the agency actually has anyone at all of adequate caliber beyond the founder. Other times we know they do, but we wonder why those people are not available to our projects, even when price is not a barrier. Perhaps it is just an “agency” mentality?



http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/SEO-Salary/330848

Search Engine Marketing - A New Start

Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet Marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in the Search Engine results pages (SERPs). According to the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization, SEM methods include: Search Engine Optimization (or SEO), paid placement, and paid inclusion. Other sources, including the New York Times, define SEM as the practice of buying paid search listings with the goal of obtaining better free search listings.

As the number of sites on the Web increased in the mid-to-late 90s, search engines started appearing to help people find information quickly. Search engines developed business models to finance their services, such as pay per click programs offered by Open Text in 1996 and then Goto.com in 1998. Goto.com later changed its name to Overture in 2001, and was purchased by Yahoo! in 2003, and now offers paid search opportunities for advertisers through Yahoo! Search Marketing. Google also began to offer advertisements on search results pages in 2000 through the Google AdWords program. By 2007 pay-per-click programs proved to be primary money-makers for search engines.

Paid search advertising hasn't been without controversy, and issues around how many search engines present advertising on their pages of search result sets have been the target of a series of studies and reports by Consumer Reports WebWatch, from Consumers Union. The FTC also issued a letter in 2002 about the importance of disclosure of paid advertising on search engines, in response to a complaint from Commercial Alert, a consumer advocacy group with ties to Ralph Nader.



http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/Search-Engine-Marketing---A-New-Start/330845